Sharing for Caring: On the Role of Collaborative Economy in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue will comprise a selection of papers dealing with how digitalization and the advances in information technology can lead to the development of innovative business models under the umbrella of the sharing or collaborative economy, focusing on their potential impact (positive or negative) from social, environmental, and economic perspectives.

We are particularly interested in research papers addressing how sharing, collaborating, merging, or establishing alliances (with B2B, B2C, and P2P perspectives) can lead to new business proposals in which services are provided with no transfer of ownership, granting temporary access, redistributing material goods, or serviticizing business models as well as their interlink with a cleaner, fairer, and more sustainable world, leaving no one behind.

Covered topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The innovation nature of the sharing economy in terms of institutional, technical, and societal changes;
• New collaborative and sharing business models and their interlink with sustainability;
• Product–service strategies for manufacturers, with which better economic, social, or environmental results are achieved;
• Development of sustainable supply chains supported by innovative information systems;
• Alliances between companies or between companies, public sector, and/or civil society (cross-sector partnerships) leading to new, more sustainable relations based on collaboration;
• Vertical integration of companies that allow for shorter, more effective supply chains;
• Transportation studies, with a particular focus on car and bike sharing, pooling of reusable transportation items, and electric mobility systems for public or private transportation;
• Decentralized systems for renewable energy generation in which prosumers (former consumers who become producers) feed the grid in many more locations, favoring the internet of energy;
• Policy issues regarding employment and taxing for rider-hailing companies;
• Informal sources of crowd-based finance as a fairer, more effective and inclusive wealth distribution lever;
• Challenges for the accommodation and tourism traditional sector and the impact on cultural heritage with the rise of the collaborative economy, with both a marketing and employment focus;
• Consumer behavior in the sharing economy with a gender perspective view;
• Externalities of the sharing economy, regarding the effect on the loss of traditional employment due to the increase of on-demand work offers, as well as the effect on real estate pricing and long-term rental prices;
• Proposals for circular economy business models and their effect on sustainability.

Envisioned contributions include original research, review papers, and conceptual and empirical (including case studies and action research) papers that use qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methodologies.

Papers submitted to this Special Issue will be subject to a rigorous peer review procedure with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications.

Dr. Gustavo Morales-Alonso
Dr. Ruth Carrasco-Gallego
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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.