2.1. An Attempt at Definition
The peer-to-peer or sharing economy can be understood as an economic model based on the sharing of underutilized assets, ranging from spaces and skills to goods, for monetary and non-monetary benefits. Once this baseline, standard definition is accepted, several subsequent clarifications often arise. It is argued, for instance, that the need for intermediaries in the SE would disappear, as an unbounded marketplace for efficient peer-to-peer exchanges between producer and consumer, seller and buyer, lender and borrower [
1]. Other explanations emphasize this dynamic of efficient exchange by defining the SE as “the act and process of distributing what is ours to others for their use and/or the act and process of receiving or taking something from others for our use” [
2] (p. 1596). Thus, the SE rests on a set of diffuse networks of connected individuals and communities that operate independently of centralized institutions, transforming the ways in which we produce, consume, finance, and learn [
3]. The practices embedded in this “new socio-economic model based on collaboration, access to, and the socialization of value production, facilitated by digital technologies” [
4] (p. 276) are then usually highlighted.
According to these definitions,
Uber or
Airbnb may come to mind, but also cooperatives,
Wikipedia, time-banks, or squatter houses. The issue, then, is that if we consider such disparate cases to be part of the SE, our definition may become a catch-all term that encompasses actors, institutions, platforms, and practices with very little, or even nothing, in common. Therefore, as Juliet Schor suggests, coming up with a robust definition of the SE in common usage is nearly impossible, given that the concept has a pragmatic rather than analytical character [
5]. Similarly, Tom Slee warns that the current definitions “don’t take us very far when talking about something as fluid and rapidly changing as the SE”. However, he acknowledges that we “need to draw some boundaries around the topic to talk about it coherently” [
6] (p. 11).
What Slee points out is that the conceptual breadth of the definitions which we use to define or explain our object of study encompasses such a diverse set of practices and economic phenomena that it is misleading to refer to them with a single label.
Should we include
Airbnb,
Wallapop,
Couchsurfing, time-banks, open-source software, or the
Urban Company? The informative content of our definition always depends on how many meanings it can exclude, meaning that the informativeness of a definition relies on its precision.
1 Therefore, the informativeness of a definition is often at odds with its truthfulness; that is, whether it “corresponds to reality” [
8].
2 It follows that finding a precise definition that is both highly informative (very precise by excluding many possibilities, for example,
Airbnb,
free software, or both) and true (its content corresponds to what the SE is
regardless of our statements in Searle’s terminology) becomes a highly demanding task in both methodological and conceptual terms.
The definitions we commonly use suffer from the confusing breadth of the field, precisely because the concept to be explained or defined “includes too many elements to allow proper theorization” [
9] (p. 2). In response, some authors adopt a more restrictive conceptual strategy by defining the SE as an economy where “consumers grant each other temporary access to under-utilized physical assets […] possibly for money” [
10] (pp. 4–5). Under this definition, practices such as peer-production, second-hand sales, and business-to-consumer rentals typical of
Wallapop,
Wikipedia, or
Zipcar would thus fall outside its scope. Similarly, the term “crowd-based capitalism” used by some authors [
11] excludes activities previously included by others [
3], such as food cooperatives, carpooling, time-banks or
coworking. Other authors employ a similarly restrictive definition, referring to the SE as the space where goods “are amenable to being shared within social sharing systems rather than allocated through markets” [
12] (p. 356). This would exclude
Airbnb,
eBay, and similar for-profit businesses. The problem is that the definitions we then employ lose much of their descriptive power, either because they are not restrictive enough—thus including cases that are too disparate—or because they are too restrictive—and so exclude too many interesting cases.
This, however, does not necessarily lead us to accept that finding an accurate way to define this concept is not possible. It only highlights that reaching a balance between inclusiveness and exclusiveness remains a significant challenge of our definitions and thus of our research agenda. Indeed, although the SE may become a true “definitional conundrum” [
13] (p. 67), we must not abandon the task of trying to understand it because, as Aristotle stated, if we neglect our definitions “the research will produce no result” [
14] (1025b). To get around this, the alternative is to operationalize what the scholastics called the formal object of study, which appears to be the most common scholarly strategy.
2.2. Operationalizing the Object of Study
A concept can be operationalized by identifying and classifying its constituent components or main parts. In the case of the SE, Russell Belk [
2] differentiates the nature of collaborative practices of sharing, gift giving, and commodity exchange. Michel Bauwens [
15] and Yochai Benkler [
16] classify it according to the types of goods or services being shared: either material resources, or intangible goods such as software, patents, or knowledge. Juliet Schor [
17] distinguishes between for-profit or altruistic activities, the types of users involved, and the kinds of services provided. Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers [
1] focus on the process of income circulation and thus differentiate between types of consumption, modes of production, and financing methods.
These different analytical proposals raise some questions. For example: should the SE be classified according to the practices carried out, such as sharing, renting, or donating, or should it be based on the economic sectors it comprises, such as accommodation, transport, or knowledge? Should we focus on the economic agents operating within it, such as private individuals, business platforms, or cooperatives? Should we rather make a distinction, based on its geographical scope, between the in-person local and the global-digital space? Beyond these different methodological proposals, however, there seems to be a consensus around the main structural sectors the SE comprises.
Collaborative or consumer participation [
18,
19], as defined by traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping, has been redefined through the advent of technology and peer communities. It is contended that collaborative consumption yields significant economic savings by granting access to goods without changing their ownership, while also saving time or space. Consequently, it would represent an efficient mode of consumption, as it valorizes underutilized assets or services. It encompasses platforms such as
Airbnb,
Uber,
eBay,
Zipcar,
Wallapop, and
DogVacay. Additionally, less commercial-oriented instances include
BitTorrent and
The Pirate Bay, citizen initiatives to exchange services or accommodation altruistically such as time-banks and
Couchsurfing, the use of local currencies led by social movements or local business platforms, and practices like bartering, social lending, clothing swaps, co-housing, and peer-to-peer rental.
Open or common knowledge [
16,
20,
21,
22], i.e., the knowledge that “is free to use, reuse, and redistribute without legal, social, or technological restriction” [
23]. Knowledge has always been produced collaboratively. The novelty is that now the “processes of production, power, exploitation, hegemony, and struggles take on the form of transnational networks that are mediated by networked information and communication technologies and knowledge processes” [
24] (p. 180). The concept of “digital” or “cognitive capitalism” [
25,
26] is used to theorize the extent to which knowledge has become the new arena of political, economic, and ideological contention. Here too, a wide range of practices coexist: from altruistic and gratuitous acts, such as giving a talk for a civil association or contributing to create a
Wikipedia page, to for-profit initiatives such as
SharingAcademy and
Trip4Real, or even protecting an academic manuscript with a
Creative Commons license.
Collaborative, P2P production or co-production [
16,
27,
28] is regarded both as an outcome of open knowledge and as its prerequisite. As extensively advocated [
29,
30], it entails a new industrial revolution that paves the way to a “transition from an economy of exchange and production to one of pollination and contribution” [
31] (p. 143). Within this emerging “social factory” the new modes of production are so “dispersed throughout the unlimited social terrain that they outgrow the physical and temporal limits of the old Fordist factory” [
32] (p. 53). Illustrative examples encompass urban community gardens, somewhat informal yet scarcely commodified shared workspaces, on-demand work platforms such as
Upwork,
Wework, and
99Design, or even
YouTube,
Flickr,
Facebook, and
X, formerly known as
Twitter.
Collaborative finance enables people to carry out economic transactions without a third-party intermediary [
33]. It is purported to “replace credit cards and banks with lower-interest person-to-person loans” [
6] (p. 21). They also include quite disparate examples. From non-strictly commercial initiatives like peer-to-peer microloans or microcredits, the contingency funds of some trade unions, and savings cooperatives such as
Coop57 or
FairCoop, to
crowdfunding platforms like
Lanzanos,
Goteo, or
Verkami, as well as international charity tools such as
GiveDirectly. For-profit examples include equity crowdfunding platforms such as
Kickstarter or
IndieGogo matching entrepreneurial projects with venture capital, peer-to-peer lending platforms like
LendingClub or
Prosper, and even digital currency and blockchain tools like
Verse or
BitSquare.
As observed, there exists an inherent trade-off between informativeness and veracity within any definition. The issue with the aforementioned definitions lies in the exacerbation of this tension, either due to their polysemous nature that covers a too heterogeneous range of activities and agents, or due to their overly restrictive character that excludes too many practices. This does not imply that defining the SE is an insurmountable task nor that it is not even necessary to advance our research plan. Rather, we are simply underlining the considerable conceptual and methodological challenges associated with this endeavor, and the fact that—as a consequence—much of the existing conceptual proposals are poorly successful.
To avoid this, we may operationalize the concept by classifying its main sectors—in this case, its constitutive activities. As we have seen, the existing literature commonly divides our object of study between these four categories: consumption, knowledge, production, and finance. The problem lies in the failure of these classifications to adhere to the three logical-formal criteria that any classification, akin to a mathematical partition, must adhere to: (i) non-nullity—ensuring no subset of the partition remains empty; (ii) completeness—ensuring no element is left outside the partition; and (iii) exclusion—ensuring no element belongs to more than one subset. Nevertheless, while these formal criteria are a necessary condition, they are not sufficient because a correct classification must also demonstrate consistency in substantive terms. Classifying between consumption, knowledge, production, and finance appears to be a suitable analytical criterion; however, is it also correct in substantive terms?
Considering the above, it appears substantively impossible to separate open knowledge from collaborative production [
34]. Likewise, collaborative consumption lacks significance without collaborative finance [
35]. Open knowledge not only influences consumption but is integral to the very concept of “cognitive capitalism” [
36]. Consequently, it prompts the question of the analytical utility and substantive validity gained by dividing the SE into these four sectors. In other words: should cooperatives be included in the SE, or are they a subset of it? Can
BitTorrent and
Airbnb be classified under the same subset of collaborative consumption? Are activities like teaching on
SharingAcademy, writing a
Wikipedia entry, or publishing a book under a
Creative Commons license substantively comparable, despite all being formally categorized as open knowledge activities? Even though they all fall under the collaborative production sector, can we equate being an
Uber driver, participating in a community garden, or joining a local currency network aiming to create a de-commoditized payment system? In essence, “what are the criteria of inclusion/exclusion within these social formations?” [
37] (p. 124). In substantive terms, the kinds of norms and logic guiding
Airbnb,
Wikipedia, the
Creative Commons Foundation, and a community garden differ significantly. Although formally they may belong to the same subset of the SE (the collaborative consumption), it is substantively impossible to equate them. As a result, the definitions and classifications commonly employed represent weak tools for operationalizing analysis, both in substantive and in formal-analytical terms.
This trade-off between informativeness and veracity is inherent in any attempt to define and operationalize a complex concept. However, in the case of the SE, this is particularly challenging. This may stem from several factors, notably one quantitative and one qualitative. On the one hand, the socio-economic practices associated with consumption, knowledge, production, and finance within the SE have expanded and multiplied rapidly in recent years, largely due to the decreasing cost and increasing accessibility of new digital technologies. On the other hand, since it first began to be theorized and conceptualized, the SE has evolved from a set of more or less minor, marginal, and potentially disruptive initiatives, often operating outside the formal channels of the market economy, to now occupy a near-central position within global chains of production, distribution, and income accumulation. As a result of both transformations, the polysemic nature of the concept of SE itself has increased exponentially, along with the challenges involved in defining and operationalizing it appropriately.
It is worth clarifying, however, that we are not asserting the impossibility of finding an accurate definition or achieving effective operationalization. Rather, we are merely underscoring the considerable conceptual and analytical challenges inherent in these tasks. Nevertheless, the primary challenge may be rooted in something much simpler than the aforementioned conceptual, logical, and analytical issues, namely that in the field of the sharing economy, as in many others, practices often precede concepts.
3 Nevertheless, it is worth noting that, in addition to the quantitative and qualitative transformations that the SE has undergone in recent years, which we have identified as two possible reasons explaining the difficulties in defining and operationalizing this concept, a third factor should be added. Indeed, what makes the SE truly challenging to apprehend conceptually and analytically is not merely its highly polysemic nature but also, and perhaps most significantly, its multiple and contradictory political-normative implications and interpretations, which have also increased enormously along with the same quantitative and qualitative transformations the SE itself has undergone.
