La consommation collaborative, le versant encore équivoque de l’économie de la fonctionnalité

Abstract

Collaborative consumption is currently lauded by a number of economists and sections of the media, who extol its many social and environmental merits. It can be defined as the consumerist aspect of the functional economy, its natural extension to the Business-to-Consumer (BtoC) and Consumer-to-Consumer (CtoC) sectors. This article explores this notion of new consumption and examines how it interrelates with and can contribute to the functional economy to develop sustainability. It is based on an analysis of 27 collaborative consumption websites and blogs, together with several academic studies carried out in the field of shared use services. The article studies the reasons and motives that the literature identifies as being used to promote the use of these collaborative services to consumers, and clarifies their contribution and their limits with regard to sustainable consumption.

Keywords

• sustainable consumption
• collaborative consumption
• functional economy
• sharing
• renting
• access