Sharing Economy Development: Empirical Analysis of Technological Factors

Abstract

The development of the sharing economy is accelerated using digital technologies. Such a topic is not widely discussed in the literature and requires knowledge to fill the existing gaps. The authors analyzed technology-driven variables which have the highest impact on expanding sharing activities. The research helps to examine the degree of integration of society into the process of sharing economy development. This paper aims to create a methodology that helps to evaluate the development of sharing platforms dependent on technological variables such as society’s access to digital services. Two activities are foreseen to achieve the goal. The first activity includes the steps necessary for revising technological variables (the compilation of an initial list of variables, the selection of variables, normalization, and the formation of correlation matrix). The second activity is designed to form a panel regression model using several sharing platform cases. Using the developed methodology, the revision of technological variables is carried out to expand the knowledge of economic science about the intensifying processes of the digitization of society, the resulting changes in consumption, and the redistribution of conventional economic solutions in the markets for goods and services. The authors compared the technological variables which had the highest impact on sharing platforms. The study results demonstrated that among ten sharing platforms, the highest dependence on technological variables is evident in the number of visitors visiting the Uber sharing platform.