The role of trust within the sharing economy and how it can be increased

Trust is seen as a prerequisite for any relationship, so it plays a crucial role in the sharing economy. Technology has made it possible for peers which have never met before to now trust each other. However, trust is still seen as a major barrier to participate in the sharing economy. Sharing economy platforms try to overcome this obstacle by so called trust-increasing measures such as ratings, reviews etc. The effectiveness of such measures has yet not fully been researched. Most studies were conducted in the United States and focused on specific measures in the context of specific sharing platforms. Furthermore, only limited research about new tools is available. These major gaps in existing research call for additional studies providing a larger picture on the effectiveness of trust-increasing measures. Therefore, this thesis examines the effectiveness of several already established, but also new tools that P2P sharing economy platforms can use in order to increase trust. The analysis focused on the trust building relation from a consumer perspective towards the private offeror of a product/service. The thesis provides information to startups and already existing sharing platforms about the importance of trust and how it can be increased. The analysis has shown that the importance of trust is perceived at a higher level if peers take the role of the offeror of the product/service rather than being on the consumer side. Furthermore, it plays a crucial role if the shared product or service touches the private sphere or not. The study also revealed that trust-increasing measures can be highly effective. This can be observed by the fact that people can trust a host from a sharing economy platform more than their neighbor or colleague. It became apparent during the study that conventional trust-increasing measures such as verification of the identity, the offeror’s certificates (i.e. trusted host), ratings, reviews etc., had a strong positive effect on trust. Links to social media accounts of the offeror had the smallest effect on trust. Additionally, the study made clear that the effectiveness of trust-increasing measures also depends on various other characteristics and features