A Systematic Literature Review on the Role of Sharing Economy Towards Sustainable Development and Future Research Direction

The term “Sharing Economy” (SE) was devised during the peak of the global financial crisis. In the current era of technological advancement, in quest of superior value distribution and the changing attitudes towards sharing, exchanging, and rental of resources without possessing the goods has triggered the emergence of the SE. The Sharing Economy has seen significant growth in recent years worldwide, spurred by factors such as increasing internet penetration, technological advancements, and changing workforce preferences. This economic system has many facets with different nomenclatures, such as gig economy, collaborative economy, collaborative consumption, peer-to-peer economy, freelancing economy, etc. With the exponential growth of the concept of sharing economy, the contribution of this economic system towards sustainability or sustainable development emerged. There is a paucity of research on the linkage between the Sharing Economy and sustainable development or sustainability. This article is an attempt to reveal the theoretical foundations and key themes underlying the field of Sharing Economy and also to develop a holistic understanding of the role of sharing economy in sustainability and sustainable development globally through a systematic review of the available literature (SLR). A bibliometric and network analysis as per the PRISMA 2020 guidelines has been conducted. through peer-reviewed articles extracted from the SCOPUS database using keyword selection. The analysis was carried out with the help of VOSviewer software. The review contributed to the identification of the research gap and might help organizations to better understand the prospects of the Sharing Economy toward sustainable development and develop better responses to sustainable development-related challenges.