The traditional ownership-based economy encourages and maximizes consumption in an unsustainable way. Unsustainable consumption causes environmental degradation and reduced ecosystem health. With the development of internet technology, the sharing economy has experienced exponential growth. Since the sharing economy has changed the way through which goods and services are consumed from traditional, ownership-based acquisition to sharing-based access, it can be viewed as a way to reduce carbon footprints. Nevertheless, the sharing economy offers cheaper consumer goods and services; it may attract people to spend more, resulting in an increase in the volume of carbon emission. Thus, it remains relatively unclear whether the sharing economy promotes or destructs environmental sustainable development.

Recently, Martin (2016) argued that the sharing economy is framed as: (1) an economic opportunity; (2) a more sustainable form of consumption; (3) a pathway to a decentralized, equitable, and sustainable economy; (4) something that creates unregulated marketplaces; (5) something that reinforces the neoliberal paradigm; and, (6) an incoherent field of innovation. Theoretically, the sharing economy can promote more sustainable consumption and production practices. It can create more economic opportunities and new marketplaces, and subsequently promote economic sustainable development. However, it may pose a serious threat to existing industries (Wu and Zhi, 2016), thus bringing more harm to economic sustainability.

Furthermore, the sharing economy can stimulate social sustainable development by solving certain social problems such as unemployment (Fang et al., 2015). It can also establish people’s collective and probably more lasting sustainable behaviours (Binninger et al., 2015). However, concerns remain, as the new business models may be in conflict with traditional business and jeopardize efforts to address social problems.

The sharing economy leads the debate on economic, social, and environmental sustainable development in different research contexts. Hence, there is a need for research to show how the sharing economy can benefit or defect sustainability in different aspects. This Special Issue on the “sharing economy for sustainability” will group together contributions describing state-of-the-art experiences and scholarly studies associated with the sharing economy and sustainability. Submitted papers should address one or more of the following questions:

• What are the sustainable issues generated from the sharing economy?
• How can the sharing economy promote economic, social, and environment sustainable development?
• How can the sharing economy influence consumers’ behavior toward sustainable/collaborative consumption?
• What are the sustainability factors that influence people to offer sharing economy services?
• What is the role of technology in steering the development of the sharing economy towards sustainability?

References:

Binninger, A.S., Ourahmoune, N., and Robert, I., (2015). Collaborative consumption and sustainability: A discursive analysis of consumer representations and collaborative website narratives, The Journal of Applied Business Research, 31(3), 969-986.

Fang, B., Ye, Q., and Law, R., (2015). Effect of sharing economy on tourism industry employment. Annals of Tourism Research, 57, 264-267.

Martin, C.J., (2016). The sharing economy: A pathway to sustainability or a nightmarish form of neoliberal capitalism? Ecological Economics, 121, 149-159.

Wu, X., and Zhi, Q., (2016). Impact of shared economy on urban sustainability: From the perspective of social, economic, and environmental sustainability, Energy Procedia, 104, 191-196.

Prof. Ivan Lai
Dr. Yide Liu
Dr. Dong Lu
Dr. Hiram Ting
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Sustainable innovative technologies;
• Sharing economy;
• Collaborative consumption;
• Social innovation;
• New metrics;