Sharing Economy, Platforms, and Crowds

Topics related to the sharing economy, platforms, and crowds are not only among the most widely researched areas within the field of information systems, but also bear deep economic and societal implications. This track invites cutting-edge research that addresses issues relating to these topics.

The sharing economy has disrupted conventional socio-economic activities by allowing individuals to exchange underutilized assets or resources for monetary gains at very low transactional costs. Under this broad umbrella, sharing can stem from user-owned assets, as exemplified on Airbnb, Didi, Grab, and Uber, or take place through the renting of company-owned resources, as epitomized on Bird, CitiBike, Lime, and Zipcar.

Fueling the explosion of the sharing economy are multi-sided platforms which, by connecting varied actors throughout the world for little marginal cost, facilitate interactions and transactions in a seamless fashion across a variety of contexts: dating, education, financing, hospitality, housing, product review, and transportation, to name a few. These multi-sided platforms have revolutionized industries, for better and for worse, with both promising and disappointing socio-economic impacts being documented.

Likewise, sharing economy would not have been possible without the growing societal transition into crowd-based modes of innovation and production that leverage the capability of digital platforms and technological infrastructures to orchestrate distributed and heterogeneous individuals and organizations toward achieving a wide range of socio-economic objectives.

Track Co-Chairs
Juan Feng, Ph.D., Tsinghua University
Abhay Mishra, Ph.D., Iowa State University
Chee-Wee Tan, Ph.D., Copenhagen Business School