Modern social trends that facilitate collaborative consumption adoption: an exploration of new opportunities

In the last decade, collaborative consumption (CC) has grown in popularity. While prior research primarily looked at consumers’ fundamental motivations to use CC, it has largely ignored broader and more unique factors given societal evolution and emerging trends, such as sustainability, minimalism, and digitalization. To fill this gap, the authors review the literature on CC and integrate several theoretical perspectives to explore the potential impacts of three social trends (i.e., sustainability, minimalism, and digitalization) on consumers’ intentions to adopt CC. They propose that identity verification and status signaling might serve as two unique mechanisms to encourage CC adoption. In particular, they conceptualize, build, and describe a comprehensive 3x2 framework that provides guidance to researchers and business managers to further explore new opportunities in the field of CC.