IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/sumafo/v27y2019i2d10.1007_s00550-019-00489-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ecological and socio-technical assessment of collaborative consumption: resource efficiency potentials
[Ökologische und soziotechnische Bewertung des gemeinschaftlichen Konsums: Ressourceneffizienzpotenziale]

Author

Listed:
  • Katrin Bienge

    (Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy)

  • Jens Clausen

    (Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability)

  • Paul Suski

    (Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy)

  • Martina Schmitt

    (Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy)

Abstract

Responsible consumption and production is one of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. To achieve this goal the currently high extraction rates of natural resources, that our economy is based on, needs a transformation of the consumption and production system considering technological as well as social change. One of the promising transition approaches is seen in collaborative consumption with its many facets of socio-cultural innovations and fast growing number of participants and businesses. With a decreasing production of goods, due to a utilisation of underutilised assets, these offers might support an absolute reduction of the global resource use. However, a positive environmental effect depends on the setting and the social practices of such sharing offers and is not sustainable or resource efficient generally. Also, resource efficient practices with a low diffusion potential that stick in a niche offer no leverage to achieve sustainable consumption patterns. Thus, this paper describes a mixed method approach to analyse the resource efficiency and diffusion potential of 20 sharing offers in the area of mobility, housing & travel and everyday objects in Germany. Results show that the overall positive environmental connotation of sharing offers cannot be confirmed. We identified five clusters of offers that are all treated to be differently when it comes to deploying the positive potential and avoid unnecessary societal effort to achieve the mentioned Sustainable Development Goal.

Suggested Citation

  • Katrin Bienge & Jens Clausen & Paul Suski & Martina Schmitt, 2019. "Ecological and socio-technical assessment of collaborative consumption: resource efficiency potentials [Ökologische und soziotechnische Bewertung des gemeinschaftlichen Konsums: Ressourceneffizienz," NachhaltigkeitsManagementForum | Sustainability Management Forum, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 139-149, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sumafo:v:27:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s00550-019-00489-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s00550-019-00489-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00550-019-00489-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00550-019-00489-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cajaiba-Santana, Giovany, 2014. "Social innovation: Moving the field forward. A conceptual framework," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 42-51.
    2. Acquier, Aurélien & Daudigeos, Thibault & Pinkse, Jonatan, 2017. "Promises and paradoxes of the sharing economy: An organizing framework," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 1-10.
    3. Zhifu Mi & D’Maris Coffman, 2019. "The sharing economy promotes sustainable societies," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 10(1), pages 1-3, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pies, Ingo & Hielscher, Stefan & Everding, Sebastian, 2020. "Do hybrids impede sustainability? How semantic reorientations and governance reforms can produce and preserve sustainability in sharing business models," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 174-185.
    2. Andrei Boar & Ramon Bastida & Frederic Marimon, 2020. "A Systematic Literature Review. Relationships between the Sharing Economy, Sustainability and Sustainable Development Goals," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-14, August.
    3. Cossey, Jozef & Dedeurwaerdere, Tom & Périlleux, Anaïs, 2023. "Inherently unstable? Scaling, mission drift, and the comparative performance of community-based platforms in the sharing economy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    4. Vilma Karobliene & Vaida Pilinkiene, 2021. "The Sharing Economy in the Framework of Sustainable Development Goals: Case of European Union Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(15), pages 1-26, July.
    5. Parthasarathy, Balaji & Dey, Supriya & Gupta, Pranjali, 2021. "Overcoming wicked problems and institutional voids for social innovation: University-NGO partnerships in the Global South," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    6. Wei Yin & Berna Kirkulak-Uludag & Ziling Chen, 2021. "Is the Sharing Economy Green? Evidence from Cross-Country Data," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-19, October.
    7. Anna Veretennikova & Kseniya Kozinskaya, 2022. "Assessment of the Sharing Economy in the Context of Smart Cities: Social Performance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-15, September.
    8. Küper, Inken & Edinger-Schons, Laura Marie, 2020. "Is sharing up for sale? Monetary exchanges in the sharing economy," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 223-234.
    9. Petteri Repo & Kaisa Matschoss, 2019. "Social Innovation for Sustainability Challenges," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-12, December.
    10. Emmanuelle Reuter, 2022. "Hybrid business models in the sharing economy: The role of business model design for managing the environmental paradox," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 603-618, February.
    11. Mayara Moraes Monteiro & Carlos M. Lima Azevedo & Maria Kamargianni & Yoram Shiftan & Ayelet Gal-Tzur & Sharon Shoshany Tavory & Constantinos Antoniou & Guido Cantelmo, 2022. "Car-Sharing Subscription Preferences: The Case of Copenhagen, Munich, and Tel Aviv-Yafo," Papers 2206.02448, arXiv.org.
    12. Baran Grzegorz, 2020. "Social Innovation Living Labs as Platforms to Co-design Social Innovations," Journal of Intercultural Management, Sciendo, vol. 12(1), pages 36-57, March.
    13. Valeria Andreoni, 2020. "The Trap of Success: A Paradox of Scale for Sharing Economy and Degrowth," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-17, April.
    14. Xie, Xiaoxia & Huang, Chien-Chung & Chen, Yafan & Hao, Feng, 2019. "Intelligent robots and rural children," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 283-290.
    15. Yi, Wenjing & Yan, Jie, 2020. "Energy consumption and emission influences from shared mobility in China: A national level annual data analysis," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).
    16. Lise Arena & Anthony Hussenot, 2021. "From Innovations at Work to Innovative Ways of Conceptualizing Organization: A Brief History of Organization Studies," Post-Print hal-03290300, HAL.
    17. Guanqiao Pan & Hongchao Jiang & Qianhui Jin & Tianyi Zhao & Jiajun Wang & Li Wang, 2021. "Study on the Sharing Transportation Based on Game Theory," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-28, August.
    18. Ghazinoory, Sepehr & Nasri, Shohreh & Ameri, Fatemeh & Montazer, Gholam Ali & Shayan, Ali, 2020. "Why do we need ‘Problem-oriented Innovation System (PIS)’ for solving macro-level societal problems?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    19. Yu Hao & Yingting Wang & Qiuwei Wu & Shiwei Sun & Weilu Wang & Menglin Cui, 2020. "What affects residents' participation in the circular economy for sustainable development? Evidence from China," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(5), pages 1251-1268, September.
    20. Paul Schneider, 2018. "Managerial challenges of Industry 4.0: an empirically backed research agenda for a nascent field," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 803-848, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sumafo:v:27:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s00550-019-00489-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.