Sharing economy: Studying the social and psychological factors and the outcomes of social exchange

Against the backdrop of the growing reliance of consumers on the sharing economy, the literature still has little evidence on the psychological and social factors of use behaviour and outcomes. Given the gaps in the research, this study adopted an overarching approach to comprehensively investigate the role of the factors facilitating social exchange, reciprocity expectation and social value in use behaviour. The effects of the sharing economy on social inclusion and subjective well-being were also tested. The data were collected from 487 users of different sharing economy platforms in the United States. Structural equation modelling was employed to analyse the correlation of the examined variables. The findings indicated that the use of the sharing economy was conditioned by the positive effect of egoistic belief, reciprocity norm, social value, and the negative effect of identification. Also, the study found strong relationships between use behaviour and outcomes, moderated by age, use frequency and use intensity. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are provided.