Socio-environmental determinants of willingness to participate in the collaborative economy

This chapter explores the role of socio-environmental determinants in the willingness to participate in the collaborative economy (CE). The CE refers to remunerated and non-remunerated peer-to-peer sharing of underused resources via online (collaborative) platforms. Socio-environmental determinants represent a key distinctive feature of the CE and yet the field of empirical studies is far from being saturated. The present study used a non-representative sample of 363 EU-based respondents. The set of explored variables included the respondents' demographic characteristics and socio-environmental determinants of sociability, materialistic orientation, consumers' need for uniqueness (NFU), and environmental concern. The main findings revealed women being more willing to participate in the CE as well as environmental concern and propensity to make unpopular choices (a dimension of NFU) having a positive effect on the participation willingness. The proposed model accounted for 9% in variability of the willingness to participate in the CE. This indicates that the socio-environmental determinants of participation in the CE are most likely (heavily) outweighed by the economic and/or technological ones.