Shared Goods but What about Shared Identities? the Resonance of the Sharing Economy in Local Communities

Since the economic downturn of 2008, a set of companies known as the “sharing economy” has emerged with claims to bring more sustainability, trust, and solidarity to local economic exchange. While these companies span a range of services including accommodation, transportation, food, and labor, they have in common a business model which involves: 1) sourcing their product/services from a community of users, 2) renting that product/service out to their customer/user base, and 3) extracting a profit from the exchange, all through the means of internet technologies. These companies’ model of profit-making, along with their claims that they provide social benefits, place them in an organizational category called the social enterprise (Galaskiewicz and Barringer 2012).

            Indeed, many companies in the sharing economy argue that such services allow an extra income for those trying to make ends meet, repurpose unused goods, reduce waste, and encourage egalitarianism, hospitality, and trust. For instance, the ride-sharing company Lyft and labor-sourcing company Taskrabbit advertise the community-building benefits of their services with their slogans, “your friend giving you a ride” (Lyft.com) and “connecting you to safe and reliable help in your neighborhood” (Taskrabbit.com). Similarly, Airbnb’s homepage reads “welcome home” and “belong anywhere” with images of a diverse, socially-conscious, and worldly community of users. These arguments are now repurposed in regulatory hearings as the firms face enormous pushback from local governments and incumbent industries, who would like to see the them subject to more stringent taxes and standards. However, beyond these claims of social benefit, very little is known about whether these organizational identities are actually reflected in the characteristics of their communities of users. What type of user constitutes the sharing economy “movement” and to what extent does it match the movement envisioned by the firms?

            Recent work synthesizing the literature on social movements and organizations can inform such questions. These studies build on earlier traditions from organizational ecology, the new institutionalism, and the framing literature to show how organizational repertoires can explain the increasing political influence of the firm. For instance, studies have shown how movements in the marketplace—such as those involving micro brewers (Carroll and Swaminathan 2000; Rao 2008) and grass-fed meat and dairy producers (Weber, Heinze, and DeSoucey 2008)—are often successful when they borrow the frames, codes, and tactics of other “grassroots” social movements, emphasizing their non-conformity with conventional production. Such organizational tactics can carry consequence in the political sphere as well, when these seemingly populist methods give firms’ legitimacy in advocating for particular policy changes (Walker 2014).

            However, despite these insights on firm politicking, this literature has yet to fully examine the credibility and salience of these cultural repertoires, or what the framing literature calls “cultural resonance” (Benford and Snow 2000: 619). Many studies proxy an organization’s resonance through analysis of particular political (policy changes, increased movement participation) or economic (firm survival, revenue) outcomes without systematic examination of its actual membership or audiences. This study works to enhance the literature on movements in the marketplace, examining the role of consumers in constructing organizational authenticity.

            The sharing economy firm is a rich model for this type of analysis because it presents contradictory and complex messages. As Galaskiewicz and Barringer (2012:54) point out, the hybrid form of the social enterprise leads to a problem of being “unambiguously ambiguous” in category; audiences have trouble judging this type of firm’s efforts when they have a dual, and often contradictory, mission of social benefit and profit-making. This is further complicated by the “prosumption” (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010) aspect of the model where users—in doubly owning and consuming the firm’s goods—could have an enhanced stake in the firm’s activities. Given these characteristics of the model, the dynamics of participation in the sharing economy are unclear.

            This study explores such questions through an examination of participation in one of the largest sharing economy firms, Airbnb. Drawing on an original dataset that merges 2010-2014 census demographics, 2011 NCCS nonprofit data, and 2015 listing data web-scraped from Airbnb.com for more than 51,000 census tracts, I analyze the extent to which claims about the sharing economy’s benefits match the identifiers of neighborhoods where Airbnb participation is most dense. My preliminary analysis indicates that sharing economy firms and their local membership share commitments to social welfare and awareness, but that these commitments are complicated by the profit-seeking model of the sharing economy form. In particular, the Airbnb case illustrates that membership is strong in communities characterized by high levels of nonprofit services and education but also in communities with racial homogeneity and significant wealth, a reality that challenges the company’s claims of egalitarianism. Such findings extend understanding of the organizational authenticity of movements in the marketplace, highlighting how the contradictory goals of the sharing economy firm resonate with consumer audiences.

References

 

Benford, Robert D. and David A. Snow. 2000. “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment.” Annual Review of Sociology26:611–39.

Carroll, Glenn R. and Anand Swaminathan. 2000. “Why the Microbrewery Movement? Organizational Dynamics of Resource Partitioning in the US Brewing Industry.” American Journal of Sociology106(3):715–62.

Galaskiewicz, Joseph and Sondra N. Barringer. 2012. “Social Enterprises and Social Categories.” Pp. 47–70 in Social Enterpises: An Organizational Perspective, edited by B. Gidron and Y. Hasenfeld. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Rao, Hayagreeva. 2008. Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Ritzer, George and Nathan Jurgenson. 2010. “Production, Consumption, Prosumption The Nature of Capitalism in the Age of the Digital ‘prosumer.’” Journal of Consumer Culture10(1):13–36.

Walker, Professor Edward T. 2014. Grassroots for Hire: Public Affairs Consultants in American Democracy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Weber, Klaus, Kathryn L. Heinze, and Michaela DeSoucey. 2008. “Forage for Thought: Mobilizing Codes in the Movement for Grass-Fed Meat and Dairy Products.” Administrative Science Quarterly 53(3):529–67.