Do You Trust Strangers? : A Study on What Impacts Trust in the Sharing Economy

The sharing economy is a growing phenomenon, which has created markets out of the surplus of resources by allowing people to share these with peers. As the sharing economy is built upon peer-to-peer interactions, the user is dependent on the experience and trust offered by the provider, making trust crucial. Previous research on what affects trust in the sharing economy only focused on one factor at a time, and these factors have been reputation, peer-to-peer influence and perceived privacy and security. This has led to failing to gain a holistic picture of how the factors combined impact trust in the sharing economy. To cover this gap in research, this study combined the factors mentioned above into a conceptual model to explain the holistic impact on trust in the sharing economy. A sample of 329 respondents participated in the survey, where the results show that peer-to-peer influence, and perceived privacy and security together have a positive impact on trust in the sharing economy. Reputation on the other hand, does not have an impact in this conceptual model. The conceptual model of this study explains 17.2 percent of trust in the sharing economy, and based on the results of this study, implications and suggestions for future research will be presented