Developing a value creation framework in the sharing economy

Given the rapid development of social networks and advances in electronic devices, many businesses have emerged in the sharing economy. However, in the sharing economy, creating value for consumers and service providers has been difficult. Most research on value creation in the sharing economy has only looked at the customer perspective. It has not addressed how value is created for other actors such as the service provider (the owner of physical goods that delivers the service) or the service enabler (owner of the digital platform), and which configurations of value offering can lead to greater perceived value. Therefore, this study examines the role of all three actors involved in value creation in the sharing economy. 

This research applies two main theories to address the research objectives. First, to understand how value is created in the sharing economy, this study develops a theoretical framework based on positional advantage theory to explain how the relationships between the constructs of the study are. According to this theory, value creation is a process by which the service enabler creates value offering. At the same time, the customers/service providers subjectively assess the service enabler's value offering in the form of perceived value. When the value offering matches the value perceived by customers/service providers, performance outcomes including customer loyalty and service provider extra-role brand building behaviour will be obtained. 

This framework also includes the boundary conditions that improve perceived value. Second, this research adopts the configurational theory to investigate the impacts of various value offering configurations upon perceived value in the sharing economy. 

This research employs a quantitative research design, employing a survey protocol to address the research questions. In doing so, dyadic data collection applies to collect data in order to test the developed theory. Specifically, two surveys are designed and administered to customers and service providers of sharing services in the transportation sector in Iran, resulting in data being collected from 506 users, including 253 dyads of customers and service providers. 

To analyze the survey data, first, SmartPLS has been used to test the measurement and structural models. Secondly, we have applied fsQCA to investigate different configurations of value offering leading to greater perceived value. Based on the results, the majority of the hypotheses are accepted. Besides, fsQCA proposes the value offering combinations that lead to greater perceived value. 

This research offers several contributions to theory and practice by developing a multi-party value creation framework in the sharing economy in general and the transportation sector in particular. These contributions will be beneficial for developing the relevant theories, mainly to the services marketing literature and, more specifically, to the value creation and sharing economy literature. Overall, the findings of the study support the development of a conceptual framework for value creation in the sharing economy, including antecedents, consequences, and boundary conditions of perceived value. Furthermore, this study identifies the specific configurations of value offering that can better predict the perceived value by taking a holistic and combinatorial viewpoint. This research is among the first to identify these combinatory effects of value types in this context by using configurational logic.