**7. Sharing Economy and the Sustainability of Urban Destinations: The Social Capital Theory Perspective**

The literature considering the impact of the SE on sustainability of local community in the tourism context summarized in Table 2 tends to characterize the aspects of that impact as positive or negative (or supporting sustainability/unsustainability of local community). Adopting Putnam's approach to social capital for the need of an analysis of the sustainability impacts of the SE on a local community in the context of overtourism, it is important to take a collective level approach. Thus, there is a need for a changing of the perspective from individually or commonly experienced changes within neighborhoods to a more general view which excludes interpretations of the impacts in the positive/negative category. Thus, the distinction used in the Table 2 between favoring sustainability and favoring unsustainability impacts must be translated into the SCT conceptual language and transformed into the division between the bridging and bonding social capital. Taking the perspective of the SCT needs a reference to the valence of the impact. As a neutral heuristic construct, social capital cannot be considered as being positive or negative. As the distinction between the bonding and bridging social capitals is not sharp, the coexistence of both is assumed. Thus, an increase in the overall cost of living was considered to be negative as an example, thereby providing an increasingly unsustainabile impact of the SE on a community (Table 2). From the SCT perspective, this outcome should be considered as referring to the bonding social capital, independently from its valency. The outcome of such capital can be related to closing communities and suppressing innovation, which cannot be distinctly considered as being purely negative or positive. In this way, we refer to the SCT in a fashion similar to Rodriguez-Giron and Vanneste [104] who perceives it as "a heuristic tool to study a destination as a group of actors trying to act together, with its positive and negative aspects" (p.5).

The identification of the SE impacts exhibited in Table 2 relates to all the impacts which have been identified in the studies qualified to the selected systematic literature review as an internally undifferentiated group (except sustainability dimension criterium). They are the impacts which are experienced by residents in the consecutive stages of the process of the SE's expansion in the community. For example, disturbance induced by renovations of apartments and evictions can be experienced at the same time as an increase in job opportunities, cultural learning and unfair competition felt by traditional accommodation entrepreneurs. Eventually, a loss of identity and local culture are the final results. Some issues, like the quality of formal regulation and governing towards the SE, can change over time. We are aware of this process as presented by Stergiou and Farmaki [28], but we do not include it in social capital perspective.

The distinction between two dimensions of social capital induces the need to differentiate between the extent of experiencing each one by the members of a community. Social capital is not an individual property and its potential for sustainability does not lie in the hands of single actors. Thus, it has to be considered from the perspective of a local community [17]. For example, the community's sentiment could be different among the tenants playing the role of hosts in a new sharing community.

Classifying the impact of the SE on social capital within a community with a distinction between the bonding and bridging forms of social capital leads to generation of the framework presented in Table 4. In comparison to Table 2, many impacts have been consolidated and reformulated to suit the SCT conceptual framework. The left upper column includes the SE as supporting higher entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity, open attitudes, breaking existing norms of thinking and affecting behavior in communities. That impact might be assessed as both positive and negative, depending on the understanding of the community. The upper right column includes the SE as supporting strong, homogenous communities, tending to provide protection in exchange for 'not leaning out of line'. That impact might be assessed as only being negative for a community, regardless of alternative perceptions.

Nevertheless, many impacts could be categorized in both dimensions of the capital, which is a more significant consequence. Thus, a much wider discussion is needed on how or towards whom the bridging and bonding function of social capital should be interpreted. More authentic interactions between residents and tourists, loss of identity or displacement of low-income or frustrated residents are good ground for this research. Both impacts are induced by the SE expansion. Interactions can be experienced as authentic only by apartment owners being a part of the SE community. Loss of identity in one group could mean a new identity in other groups. Evictions are caused by the SE expansion (enhancing bridging capital), but experienced within a traditional community (referring to bonding capital), since social capital is a two-sided coin concept.




Source: own elaboration; based on Table 2.

The majority of the SE impacts which were classified as favoring sustainability refers to the bridging side of social capital. However, the inclusive capital is connected with the impacts acknowledged as being disruptive. They are all of economic origin and are related to a new form of business relationships which have been triggered by the SE. The new rules of competition, under regulated areas of social activity and commodification of space are major examples of this disruption. On the other hand, the bonding function of the social capital comprises only the SE impacts, which were acknowledged to favor reduced sustainability. The majority of them are in the social and environmental domain.

The division between the bridging and bonding social capital also evokes impacts assigned to the SE community only, but have a typical bonding characteristic within the new community, thereby sharing a platform-modified area of social capital within local communities affected by overtourism. Higher incomes and social segregation in residential areas on the one hand, and racial disadvantages and external control of local housing market by the SE platform owners on the other hand are good examples of this. The former examples strengthen exclusiveness externally, while the latter are experienced only within the members of this group, which strengthens the group's internal consistency. In this setting, the bonding social capital becomes more inclusive as hosts are colonizing the common

lived spaces of housing buildings and commodifying it as the resources used in sharing business. Moreover, the bridging capital becomes more exclusive, which means that it requires participation in sharing economy platforms as well as knowledge and ability to participate in business in accordance with the SE's community rules.

In this realm, the SE platforms become the moderators of the emerged sharing platforms-modified social capital (see the lower part of Table 4). This new configuration of social capital can occur due to the factors stimulated by the SE. Some indicators of this configuration of social capital can be distinguished as:


Some characteristics of more general nature specific to this configuration of social capital can also be distinguished, such as: an orientation towards the future; heterogeneity (diversity); enhanced susceptibility to a fast and frequent transformation (and an ability to a complete transmutation at times); choice selectivity of city development goals and spheres as far as interests are concerned; a tendency towards a strong teleological, i.e., purposeful, orientation of social participation (undertook activities); or a powerfully stimulating influence on the development of the so-called citizen journalism. A similar proposition to extend Putnam's concept of bonding and bridging social capital when analyzing tourist destination can also be found in the work of Rodriguez-Giron and Vanneste [103]. They suggest introducing a linking social capital which points to vertical social ties among actors who control key resources. Interpreting this concept in the shadow of the SE, this capital refers mainly to sharing platforms, which links it to our concept of sharing platforms–modified social capital.

As the concept of sharing platforms–modified social capital is of a viewpoint character, its empirical identification could be challenging while considering both the difficulties occurring in the attempts of verification of social capital concepts and the difficulties associated with the tourism research obtained from an interdisciplinary and multifaceted analysis of this phenomenon. One of the most relevant problems could certainly be the fact that the identification and analysis of the relations taking place among the examined phenomena, i.e., the SE, sustainability, social capital and overtourism, is often challenging and that this identification and analysis could be possible only in the medium-term or even the long-term. For that reason, the matrix exhibited in Figure 1 could be a useful tool for such analyses.

**Figure 1.** Matrix for identifying and analyzing the impact of the SE on social capital of urban destinations. **Legend**: 1 Higher incomes of owners renting their properties; 2 Improvements in residential units; 3 New socio-spatial relations restricting residents and traditional stakeholders; 4 Social segregation in residential areas; 5 Increasing sense of authentic interactions; 6 Racial disadvantages; 7 New identity and local culture; 8 Increasing cultural exchange and cultural learning; 9 Fostering of local entrepreneurship and small businesses; 10 Colonization of the lived spaces of urban housing; 11 Greater destination loyalty of tourists; 12 Erosion of workers' rights; 13 Decline in community well-being referring to reputational system of sharing economy platforms; 14 Moral issues related to impacts on tourists; 15 Increase in precarious jobs and casualization of labor with no social security coverage; 16 External control of local housing/tourist market by the SE platform owners; 17 Money transferred by sharing platforms outside local economic system.

Figure 1 exhibits all the most relevant manifestations of the sharing economy impact identified and shown in Table 4 as a new configuration of social capital. For example, higher incomes earned by the hosts (impact 1) could be identified almost immediately and without using complex research tools, while a decline in community well-being (impact 13) and formation of a new identity and local culture (impact 7) could be a complex and long-term challenge. Moreover, although transferring a portion of revenues generated by short-term rentals outside the local economic system (impact 17) occurs during the time of booking by users, its size can be difficult to estimate. On the other hand, studying the impact of colonization of the lived spaces of urban housing by the SE (impact 10) could be possible only in the long-term. Thus, the use of the matrix allows us to include the complexity of the analyzed phenomena and to refer to them in a relatively uncomplicated way, with no necessity to evaluate them (according to the culturalist perspective). Moreover, it facilitates the choice of appropriate methods, techniques and research procedures including, depending on a scale of possibilities of scientific recognition and probable time of occurrence, virtually all the potential sharing economy impacts on social capital and the sustainable development of cities in the context of overtourism.
