COLLABORATIVE CONSUMPTION THROUGH NEW TECHNOLOGIES

The goal of the present paper is to present the raise of collaborative consumption through new technologies, and find out the impact of this new economic system on the contemporary society. In a first place the theoretical part provide an overview of the collaborative consumption in general, with definitions, consideration of the levels of sharing economy, and main success of the collaborative organizations in the 21th century. Then a part highlighting the key role of new technologies and internet for the development of this concept is mentioned, with a notion of access, trust and role played by communities in this system. Nonetheless the reasons of involvement to this sharing economy are given and explanations about how sharing economy is giving answered to issues of this century, followed by the problems concerning the impact on traditional businesses. The experiment, survey and interview were aimed at testing the knowledge of the respondents on the concept, discover which reasons influence the involvement and find out which place do they give to sharing economy as a change of the consuming behaviors. Data for the research were collected from 108 respondents, through an online survey. Subjects were randomly selected. The interview was conduct with a Finnish user of couch surfing, a collaborative lifestyle. This study support the view that collaborative consumption implies modification in the economic system nowadays, and that it could redefine the relation of ownership of the hyper-consumption times. Respondents seemed mainly willing to try and adopt more regular collaborative behaviors. In addition developments of new technologies, synchronized with new reputation systems building the trust are going to empower users and give strength to collaborative consumption. Nevertheless the study questions the boundaries of collaborative economy, and the relation with capitalism model. Also it will have to face a good management of data to promote trust, the essence of this new system. To succeed collaborative economy should work and balance with traditional businesses and states’ institutions to manage a good transition