Social Capital and Value Co-Creation: The Case of a Polish Car Sharing Company

Based on the original and unique data collected from 1000 users of PANEK CarSharing in Poland (the biggest car sharing company in Warsaw), we explored the roles of social trust and social capital in stipulating the process of value co-creation, understood as the ability to share information (engage in dialogue) with other users and the system operator. Our results indicate that particular trust has a more positive influence on the dialogue between users and the operator than general trust. This means that the higher social capital that can be established among a relatively coherent group of people with similar interests and common goals is more important than the general trust arising from our assumption that all people can be trusted, even if we do not know them. Moreover, those customers who see a shared car as a substitute for private ownership as well as those who are more environmentally aware, reveal greater propensity to share information. An important incentive for information sharing is its positive influence on improving the quality of a car sharing system.