Sharing Economy: What Works and What Doesn’t?

Uber and AirBnb, whose business models can best be described as sharing economy businesses, are disrupting the traditional businesses in their industries. Yet, many other sharing economy startups go unheard of and eventually cease to exist. There exists a fierce debate regarding whether sharing economy businesses are successful or not. While many researchers have sought to study the user motivation for engage with such businesses, no study has been conducted on a micro-economic level that determine the factors of success of sharing economy businesses. In this paper, we present a quantitative analysis study of 99 US based sharing economy business platforms to understand the factors which relate to the success of these startups. The finding of this study explains how factors such as human capital, innovation, and online reputation might impact the success of sharing economy startups