Sharing economy for sustainable development of society: a cross-country analysis

Abstract

The agenda for the sustainable development of society is one of the key issues that should be addressed at the global level. However, approaches to this problem can be profoundly different. Modern trends in the development of the digital economy open up new opportunities for solving these problems. A sharing economy focused on improving the efficiency of underutilized resources has a high potential for sustainable development. The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of sharing economy on sustainable development. The study analyzed the Sustainable Development Goals Report, the Sustainable Development Report, Timbro Sharing Economy Index, Sharing Economy Index, MD-SUTD Smart City Index Report. Data characterizing the sharing economy were examined at the country and city levels due to the specific features of the data. The study at the cross-country level revealed a weak link between sharing economy and sustainable development, which could be explained by the nature of the databases. City-level analysis focused on some aspects of sustainable development, including citizens’ assessment of waste processing services, as well as air pollution. Econometric analysis showed no connection between the sharing economy index and the analyzed indicators of sustainable development. At the same time, there is some correlation between the citizens’ assessment of sharing economy websites and applications which are designed for exchanging unnecessary things, and the above-mentioned parameters that characterize certain aspects of sustainable development. The study develops an econometric model which shows the nature of the impact of gross national income per capita and citizens' assessments of sharing economy websites and applications on the quality of waste processing services. The theoretical significance of the results obtained lies in providing more methodological tools for studying sharing economy. The practical significance lies in substantiating the heterogeneity of the impact of sharing economy on sustainable development. Keywords: sharing economy, collaborative economy, sustainable development, smart cities