Who Really Uses Platform Sharing? Mapping Consumer Motivations, Preferences, and Actual Choices

The sharing economy (SE) has evolved from an emerging and disruptive phenomenon into an increasingly established component of contemporary consumption. Digital platforms have substantially expanded consumers? access to shared goods and services, creating new opportunities for economically, socially, and environmentally oriented forms of consumption. As the SE becomes increasingly normalized, however, consumers are unlikely to constitute a homogeneous market. Understanding how consumers differ in their perceptions, preferences, and actual participation is therefore important for identifying the factors underlying the continued adoption and development of sharing-based consumption. This study aimed to identify distinct consumer segments in the Czech sharing economy and to characterize them according to their perceptions of SE, ownership preferences, actual participation, and selected socioeconomic characteristics. Data were obtained through a quantitative representative survey of 700 Czech respondents. Consumer segments were identified using k-means cluster analysis, with the optimal number of clusters determined using the elbow method. The analysis identified three substantively distinct consumer segments that differed not only in their perceptions of SE but also in the extent to which these perceptions translated into actual participation. The largest segment (52.3%), labelled ambivalent pragmatists, recognized the economic and functional benefits of sharing while retaining a relatively strong preference for ownership and exhibiting an intermediate level of actual participation. Ownership-oriented sceptics (24.0%) combined strong ownership preferences with consistently unfavourable evaluations of SE and represented the least active segment in both consumption and provision. In contrast, actively engaged consumers (23.7%) expressed broadly favourable evaluations of the economic, functional, social, and environmental value of sharing and demonstrated the highest levels of actual participation across both user and provider roles. This segment was relatively more urban and economically active, whereas the sceptical segment included a substantially higher proportion of older and retired respondents. Overall, the findings indicate that consumer engagement with the sharing economy follows a continuum from ownership-oriented scepticism and behavioural disengagement, through pragmatic but only partially realized acceptance, to active participation. The results highlight the importance of distinguishing between consumers? perceived value of sharing and their actual behavioural engagement when assessing the development of the sharing economy.