Don’t Jump on the Bandwagon: Negative Effects of Sharewashing

Access-based service usage, or simply “sharing”, is an emerging consumption trend many companies pursue. As various firms seek to exploit this trend, however, consumers might not perceive these companies’ services to be adequate, especially if they misleadingly present traditional marketplace exchanges (e.g., car renting) as sharing. This paper explores potential consequences of such forms of deceptive communication. Drawing on the concept of greenwashing and on consumer skepticism research, we introduce the concept of sharewashing, which we define as misleading communication that erroneously asserts a firm’s offer as part of the sharing economy. To identify the underlying mechanism as well as the consequences of these deceptive practices, this research refers to three experimental studies. The results reveal negative effects of sharewashing on subsequent usage intentions, compared to both sharing and renting offers. Consumer skepticism mediates the effect between the type of offering and usage intention when a sharing offer is compared to a sharewashing offer, and it leads to lower perceived attractiveness and decreasing recipients’ information seeking tendencies regarding the sharewashing offer. However, this mechanism does not hold true if a rental offer is compared to a sharewashing offer, which indicates a different underlying mechanism. From the findings we derive several implications for companies and propose future research directions.