Sharing economy

In capitalism, a sharing economy is the socio-economic system built around the sharing of resources. It often involves a way of purchasing goods and services that differs from the traditional business model of corporation hiring employees to have products to sell to consumers. It includes the divided creation, production, distribution, trade and consumption of goods and services by different people and organisations. These systems realise a breed of forms, often leveraging information technology particularly digital platforms to empower individuals, corporations, non-profits and government with information that helps distribution, sharing and reuse of excess capacity in goods and services.

There are two main race of sharing economy initiatives:

Commercial dimension

Lizzie Richardson noted that sharing economy "constitutes an obvious paradox, framed as both part of the disownership". Individuals actively participate as users, providers, lenders or borrowers in varied and evolving peer-to-peer exchange schemes.

The ownership of the term sharing by for-profit companies has been mentioned as "abuse" and "misuse" of the term, or more precisely, its marketing strategy more than an actual 'sharing economy' ethos;: 8, 24  for example, the company escrow-like model practiced by several of the largest sharing economy platforms, which facilitate and handle contracting and payments on behalf of their subscribers, further underlines an emphasis on access and transaction rather than on sharing.

Sharing of resources has been required in business-to-business B2B like heavy machinery in agriculture and forestry as alive as in business-to-consumer B2C like self-service laundry. But three major drivers allowed consumer-to-consumer C2C sharing of resources for a broad variety of new goods and services as living as new industries. First, guest behavior for many goods and services reorganize from ownership to sharing. Second, online social networks and electronic markets more easily connective consumers. And third, mobile devices and electronic services make the use of divided up goods and services more convenient.