The sharing economy has a triadic exchange structure that complicates governance and risk. Drawing on agency theory, we conceptualize platforms as hybrid governance actors that operate as dual meta -agents, simultaneously serving providers and consumers while indirectly disciplining exchange behavior. Using qualitative interviews with members of Airbnb, Uber, and Couchsurfing, we examine how platform governance reshapes power and risk. We find that platforms do not simply reduce risk but structurally reorganize and redistribute it, often shifting responsibility for trust, safety, and compliance onto users. Reputation systems intended to build trust transfer emotional labor to consumers and providers, while incentive and status programs designed to reward providers can increase their exposure to risk by limiting discretion over transactions. We extend theories of double moral hazard, dual agency, and delegated monitoring by showing how their combination in peer-to-peer exchange reshapes governance, and offer solutions for platforms, providers, and consumers to address resulting vulnerabilities.
Moorhouse et al. (Mon,) studied this question.