Uber,Car (Uber Pool Returns & Is Now In More Aussie Cities Than Ever Before (bosshunting.com.au))by CHRIS SINGH (CC0 1.0 Universal)

Have you used Uber to take a taxi recently? Did you use Airbnb to stay on your last trip? Have you used bike-sharing instead of walking this week? These are all derivatives of the sharing economy. Services in the form of sharing economy are flooding our lives and causing changes in our lives.The sharing economy itself has become a golden key to today’s global economy.

What is Sharing Economy?

The sharing economy in the digital age depends on the sharing of resources on the market platform based on information technology created by the third party(Spaeth, 1978) . This third-party platform can be a commercial organization or a government, through which individuals can lend their idle resources, such as idle unoccupied houses and redundant cars. The five elements of sharing economy are: idle resources, right to use, connection, information and liquidity. An excellent platform will use technology and system to balance these five elements to promote the sharing economy among individuals.

Sharing Economy,Colorful,Human by GDJ (CC0 1.0 Universal), via Openclipart

The Development History of Sharing Economy

In traditional society, sharing already exists, and it is a typical form of sharing that friends borrow things from each other. However, the traditional sharing can’t create a certain scale of economic form because it is too limited by space and the trust of both parties. After 2000, the era of web2.0 came, and various online communities and forums began to appear. Users can share their opinions and information with strangers on the Internet. At that time, most forms of sharing on the Internet were limited to information sharing among users, and there were few physical sharing and monetary rewards. Around 2010, with the emergence of Uber, Airbnb and other physical sharing platforms, the sharing of the online world began to be more than free information sharing, and more and more kinds of strangers who got paid by the transfer of the right to use goods began to share.

The “2016 World Sharing Economy Summit Forum” held in Macau from November 8 to 10, 2016 brought together the world’s top platforms and talents with the theme of “Trillion-Dollar Sharing Economic Investment Opportunities”.Since this meeting, the sharing economy has begun to develop at a faster pace around the world, and related platforms and products have begun to innovate and produce crazily.

Beijing, Shared Bikes by Bird Lai CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Deed | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International, via Flickr

Sharing Economy in China Market

With the rapid development of Uber and Airbnb in European and American markets, the sharing economy boom in China started with some brand-new service forms. For example, the shared charging treasure only took 40 days to obtain 11 financing, and the financing amount reached 1.1 billion RMB. In China, a huge market with a large population, as long as it caters to the needs and tastes of the public, projects with a single benefit of only a few dollars can also get extremely high returns. This is why China’s top economic sharing platforms are dedicated to economic sharing services that are closer to people’s lives.

Why Does Sharing Economy Develop so Rapidly?

The new form of sharing economy brought by the Internet has completely avoided the disadvantages of sharing economy in traditional society, such as being limited by limited spatial distance and the lack of sufficient trust between the two parties to cooperate. Major companies have built excellent sharing platforms through the Internet and used powerful algorithms to help accurate users’ preferences. In this way, the platform can help users find the most suitable sharing partner faster through their usual options and big data. Compared with the sharing economy in traditional society, the sharing economy brought by the Internet is much more convenient, so that users don’t have to stand on the roadside waiting for a taxi, but only need to make an appointment with a mobile phone to pick themselves up before going out. This is also the reason why the sharing economy is welcomed by people and developed rapidly. Not only because of the excellent function of the platform, we human beings are willing to share, our inclusion to share in pre-social, by sharing we shall return to who we really are (Nicholas,2016).

The Positive Impact of Sharing Economy

The sharing economy has developed and spread to all sectors of the economy(Geissinger,2019). According to the latest data, in the first quarter of 2023, Didi‘s revenue was 42.712 billion yuan, up 19.1% over the same period of last year, and the order volume of its core platform reached 2.875 billion, up 15.6% over the same period of last year. This also indicates that the sharing economy is becoming more and more acceptable and useful in people’s minds. The positive impact of the sharing economy relying on the Internet can not only expand people’s consumption demand, but also meet the interests of more people. The sharing economy has activated the current financial industry. The sharing economy system promotes the flow of wealth through the contribution of resources, and improves the circular efficiency of wealth in society. Internet sharing economy has become an indispensable and important part of the social service industry. Excellent sharing economic platforms have been born in areas such as accommodation, transportation and life services, so that businesses and users sharing resources can get better experiences.

The Negative Impact of the Sharing Economy

Of course, nothing is perfect in the world, and no matter how good a project is, it will have its drawbacks. For example, the development of the sharing economy relies on the storage of information on the Internet, and users’ privacy and personal information can easily be leaked. This leads to information security risks when users enjoy the sharing economy. Secondly, personal safety hazards also require special attention. Whether it is Didi in China or Uber in Europe and the United States, there have been many serious security incidents. It is also particularly important for the platform to screen and supervise online ride-hailing drivers. These problems need to be solved for passengers in advance so that passengers can use online ride-hailing with peace of mind. Otherwise, online ride-hailing safety incidents will lead to serious social security risks and plunge the entire society into panic. The most important point is the platform’s supervision of public shared resources, otherwise it will lead to low utilization of resources. You can often see Lime shared bicycles belonging to Uber abandoned on the roadside and not parked in the designated area. This leads to the fact that sometimes no usable lime shared bicycles can be found within several kilometers. The platform needs to balancely supervise each service area to ensure that resources are not idle or have no resources to share.

The Future of Economic Sharing

At present, it seems that the field of economic sharing relies on the rapid development of the Internet and is in a good situation. It has become an indispensable part of the world economy today. Now more and more countries are beginning to vigorously develop the digital economy and have introduced many policies that are beneficial to sharing economic platforms. This fully affirms the positive role of the sharing economy in increasing people’s demand, promoting consumption and providing more employment opportunities. After the global covid phase began in 2020, the sharing economy, which had originally slowed down, began to develop rapidly. In the face of such a global market, both platforms and governments need to plan and supervise well, and continuously launch economic sharing services in new fields so that more practitioners and consumers can have confidence. Only this kind of economic sharing platform will have a better and broader future.

Conclusion

Excellent economic sharing platforms such as Uber and Airbnb are all successful cases of digital economic sharing. These economic sharing platforms will be the leaders in the development of the digital economic sharing field. Their performance will demonstrate the potential and future Only in this way can economic sharing become the golden key to the economy in the digital era.supervision, as well as continuous innovation, in order to maintain this new and rapidly developing economic form.Only in this way can economic sharing become the golden key to the economy in the digital era.

References

Geissinger, A., Laurell, C., Öberg, C., & Sandström, C. (2019). How sustainable is the sharing economy? On the sustainability connotations of sharing economy platforms. Journal of Cleaner Production, 206, 419–429. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.196

John, N. A. (2016). The age of sharing. Polity.