Sharing Economy and New Transnational Ways of Consumption in the Unicorn Age: Definitions, Dissemination and Conditioners

The Sharing Economy represents a new form of consumption whose dissemination is explained by the growing ubiquity of digital platforms and applications. This article has three objectives: 1) to build an indicator capable of measuring countries' entry into the sharing economy; 2) to characterize the entry of countries in this new consumption model and 3) identify the factors that influence its spread. Descriptive data analysis and six ordinary least squares regressions are used to identify the factors that explain the expansion of the sharing economy, measured by building a Sharing Economy Index, based on 14.9 billion traffic data on the websites and specialized sharing apps for 175 countries. Descriptive statistics show that the sharing economy is spreading mainly among the countries with the highest income. Estimated regressions indicate that internet access, property rights and the presence of an over-regulated environment are the main factors that contribute to the access to this new consumption pattern.