How to grow the sharing economy? Create Prosumers!

The sharing economy has changed many rules of business. One of those rules is the role of the firm and – importantly – the role of consumers, who can perform two roles and become both providers and consumers, i.e. “prosumers”. Therefore, the key network effect to leveraging the power of the sharing economy is for one-sided users, those who are consumers (e.g., Airbnb guests) or providers (e.g., Airbnb hosts), to add the second role and perform as providers and consumers and become prosumers (e.g., those who are Airbnb guests and hosts). Surprisingly, no studies have investigated this important phenomenon and measured how one-sided users may become prosumers. An online survey of 305 Airbnb users showed that trust and gratitude had a significant positive influence on service providers’ and consumers’ intentions to adopt the respective other role and become prosumers, and that those with high gratitude and trust had the highest intentions to become prosumers. However, consumers and providers differed markedly in how trust and gratitude influenced their intention to become prosumers. This study expands our understanding of trust and gratitude and highlights the potential for sharing platforms to create prosumers from both pools of one-sided users. Furthermore, it also makes a valuable contribution to the prosumer and sharing economy literatures by being the first to empirically measure users’ intentions to become prosumers in the sharing economy. We discuss the implications of the findings for practitioners, and suggest how future research could help leverage the sharing economy.