Guest editorial: Sharing services systems and collaborative consumption in a rapidly changing environment

Over the past two decades, the emergence of digitally mediated sharing models has profoundly reshaped how consumers access, use and experience goods and services. While early forms of sharing were rooted in community-oriented practices, such as gifting, bartering, lending, hand-me-downs and grassroots exchange markets, today’s landscape spans an extensive spectrum of arrangements. At one end are nonmonetized, socially motivated forms of sharing that emphasize generosity, mutual aid and a sense of communal belonging (Albinsson and Perera, 2012; Ozanne and Ballantine, 2010). At the other end are commercialized platforms that provide temporary access to goods and services, often for a fee, through platform to consumer such as Uber and Airbnb or peer-to-peer (P2P) models such as online swapping or renting (Guyader, 2018; Philip et al., 2015). These evolving practices have been captured under multiple labels, including the Sharing Economy (SE), Collaborative Consumption (CC) and Access-Based Services – or Consumption (ABS/ABC), each highlighting different facets of the same broad phenomenon.Despite their conceptual overlap, these terms describe distinct modes of exchange, albeit on a continuum (e.g. Habibi et al., 2017). The Sharing Economy typically denotes a technology-enabled system that uses digital platforms to mobilize underutilized resources such as living or working space, vehicles, tools or skills, by connecting providers and users at scale (Eckhardt et al., 2019). CC, by contrast, refers to the circulation of resources among individuals, either directly or via intermediaries and encompasses a wide variety of interactions: swapping, borrowing, gifting, renting or co-producing value (Albinsson et al., 2024). ABS describe business models in which consumers obtain temporary access to firm- or peer-owned assets without transferring ownership, thus decoupling usage from possession (Schaefers et al., 2016). These conceptual distinctions matter because they encompass divergent motivations, value propositions, governance mechanisms and societal consequences. They also reveal that the contemporary “sharing economy” is characterized by an inherent tension between pro-social ideals of sharing and market logics of exchange, which continues to generate debate and scholarly inquiry (Belk et al., 2019; Guyader, 2024).The modern wave of sharing is widely associated with the ascent of platform-based companies such as Airbnb and Uber, whose rapid expansion from the late 2000s onward propelled the Sharing Economy (SE) into global consciousness (Anwar, 2018; Perera and Albinsson, 2025). Yet today’s platform giants stand on the shoulders of much earlier initiatives: community clothing swaps, toy libraries, couch-surfing networks, time banks and volunteer-run ride groups that all predate the commercial platforms that later popularized the model. What distinguishes the post-2008 era is not the invention of sharing, but its commercial scaling, platformization and algorithmic organization. Companies such as Airbnb, Uber, Zipcar, GetAround and BlaBlaCar transformed modest grassroots practices, including hitchhiking, hosting travelers, borrowing a neighbor’s tools, sharing community owned goods, into standardized, reputation-driven and globally orchestrated service exchanges (Belk, 2014; Guyader, 2018; Ozanne and Ozanne 2011).This transformation has been accompanied by profound shifts in markets and society (Belk et al., 2019; Schor et al., 2020; Zervas et al., 2017). Platform companies normalized interactions between strangers, reframed idle private assets (spare rooms, cars) as monetizable resources and introduced new forms of flexibility, governance and convenience, but also risks, for both providers and users. In parallel, they disrupted incumbent industries, such as in hospitality and hired mobility services, lowered barriers to entry for providers and reshaped employment patterns through independent contract workers or so-called gig-work models (Merino-Saum et al., 2023). Scholars have noted that while the SE promised to better utilize existing resources, reduce waste and build community (Albinsson and Perera, 2009, 2012; Gollnhofer et al., 2019; Pedersen and Netter, 2015; Ray Chaudhury and Albinsson, 2015), its commercial variants often generated unintended externalities: rising housing prices in tourist cities, the professionalization of hosts and drivers, erosion of worker protections, additional environmental burdens from increased travel demand and risks to travelers and consumers as they navigate exchanges with strangers (Griffiths et al., 2019; Mosaad et al., 2023).At the same time, innovation in the SE sector has been driven by broader societal forces, including sustainability concerns, resource scarcity, digitalization, minimalism and postcrisis economic pressures. Community-oriented sharing practices have continued to flourish alongside commercial platforms, revealing a field marked by competing institutional logics (Ozanne and Ozanne, 2016; Ozanne, 2024). On one side lies a communal ethos grounded in care, reciprocity, trust and solidarity; on the other, a market-oriented logic focused on efficiency, scalability and revenue generation (Guyader, 2024; Ozanne, 2024). Research over the past decade has shown that most sharing platforms sit somewhere between these poles, blending elements of sharing and exchange in ways that both enable new forms of value creation and intensify long-standing tensions around labor, regulation and public interest (Habibi et al., 2017).The sharing landscape has diversified beyond mobility and accommodation into numerous domains: fashion libraries, repair communities, device-sharing, crowdfunding, household goods sharing and time-based service exchanges. Across these contexts, scholars have highlighted not only economic and environmental implications but also the potential for sharing practices to foster social cohesion at a time when loneliness and social fragmentation have become pressing societal concerns (Albinsson et al., 2021; Griffiths et al., 2022; Ozanne and Ozanne, 2021; Papaoikonomou et al., 2022). Table 1 summarizes highlights key themes and representative contributions in SE research. As the SE enters its third decade, it remains an important realm for scholars to explore due to its dynamic experimentation, contested meanings and continued transformation.Against this backdrop, this Special Issue seeks to advance a more nuanced understanding of sharing and CC by welcoming contributions that explore emerging concepts, technologies, regulatory questions, consumer behaviors and methodological innovations. As the phenomenon continues to evolve rapidly, as it is constantly shaped by new platforms, AI-driven coordination, shifting societal expectations and regulatory responses, there is a clear need for research that revisits foundational assumptions, develops fresh theoretical insight and examines the diverse ways in which consumers engage with sharing-based models. This issue thus brings together a curated set of studies selected through a rigorous review process, each offering novel perspectives that deepen our understanding of how sharing manifests, transforms and impacts contemporary consumption systems.We appreciate the collaboration with the Society for Marketing Advances that allowed us to organize a paper development workshop during the 2024 annual conference (6–9 November 2024, Tampa, FL). We received 11 initial submissions and invited seven presentations to participate in two sessions where the guest editor team provided feedback. Acceptance to this workshop did not guarantee publication in the current issue, nor did submissions have to be presented at the workshop for journal submissions. We invited full paper submissions by January 31, 2025. We were overwhelmed with the response from scholars for the special issue.We received 30 submissions by the Special Issue deadline, from 79 authors, representing 14 countries. After an initial review, we rejected 11 manuscripts due to a lack of fit with the special issue, and 19 were sent out for review. Ultimately, eight manuscripts were accepted for publication by the end of 2025. We’d like to thank the reviewers for their diligence, as some articles went through three, and some even four review rounds before final acceptance.We are excited to introduce the eight articles that are included in this Special Issue as they span a wide range of empirical contexts, methodological approaches and theoretical traditions (see Table 2). Collectively, they advance sharing-economy scholarship by offering complementary insights into how CC is shaped by evolving technologies, cultural and moral logics, institutional conditions and consumer motivations across diverse settings.Using more than 2,100 online reviews and blog posts pertaining to Rent the Runway, Saravade et al. (2026) assemble a meta-narrative that traces consumers’ movement through access-based consumption (ABC). Their hermeneutic, narrative-analytic approach allows them to integrate individual accounts into a broader sequence that includes key engagement points: initiation, experimentation, alternation and devotion – as well as moments of disengagement such as rejection, renunciation, recantation and reversion. Drawing on consumer-journey frameworks, innovation resistance and disadoption theory, they detail how emotional responses, contextual conditions and service performance influence movement between ownership-based (solid) and access-based (liquid) modes. The resulting meta-narrative clarifies the dynamic and nonlinear nature of ABC trajectories and identifies transition points relevant for evaluating and designing service processes.In their article, Pérez-Pérez and Benito-Osorio (2026) provide an insightful and timely examination of the way blockchain technologies can enrich marketing practices within the SE. Through a systematic literature review paired with thematic analysis guided by the American Marketing Association’s marketing definition and Eckhardt et al. (2019) framework of institutions, processes and value creation, the authors illuminate the ways decentralized systems can strengthen trust, enhance transactional transparency and enable new forms of participatory engagement. Their synthesis shows how blockchain supports more reliable reputation infrastructures, automates peer-to-peer exchanges via smart contracts, and fosters token-based mechanisms that encourage user involvement and co-creation. The study foregrounds blockchain’s potential to help sharing-oriented platforms build credibility, deepen user empowerment and coordinate value in more transparent and equitable ways. By bringing conceptual clarity and thematic structure to an emerging research space, this work meaningfully advances conversations in both SE scholarship and consumer marketing.In a cross-national study involving 2,428 survey responses drawn from Colombia, India, Japan, South Africa, Sweden and the USA, Peasley and Berndt (2026) assess how cultural orientations shape engagement with access-based and lateral P2P service systems. Drawing on consumer culture theory, they unpack how cultural indulgence, uncertainty avoidance and individualism condition perceived utilitarian value and behavioral intentions toward room-sharing and ride-hailing platforms. Their results show that indulgent and individualistic cultures are especially receptive to lateral exchange models, finding more utility and expressing stronger intentions to use P2P services, while high-uncertainty-avoidance contexts dampen perceived value and steer consumers toward more standardized, access-based options. By articulating these culturally patterned pathways, the authors demonstrate that platform uptake is not simply a matter of functional benefits but it is deeply intertwined with cultural narratives of autonomy, risk, restraint and experiential consumption. Their work enriches the sharing-economy literature by offering clear guidance on market selection, global expansion and culturally attuned promotional strategies, highlighting how service providers can align platform design, safety cues and value propositions with the cultural logics that support or inhibit CC around the world.Antón-Maraña et al. (2026) examine how sustainable development education (SDE) shapes the motivations that ultimately guide people’s attitudes toward CC platforms, an especially relevant question amid ongoing debates about whether such platforms truly encourage sustainability or simply repackage consumerism. Drawing on two complementary studies, one with high school students (n = 232) and another with older adults in a lifelong learning program (n = 157), the authors use self-determination theory to disentangle how SDE influences both intrinsic motivations (such as ecological awareness, eco-anxiety and green orientation) and extrinsic ones (functional, economic, moral and hedonic utilities). Their findings reveal a striking pattern: although SDE does strengthen several sustainability-related motivations, users’ attitudes toward collaborative platforms are still predominantly shaped by extrinsic utilities, particularly the moral and hedonic benefits associated with using these services. Among younger participants, economic and functional utilities also play an important role, while intrinsic motivations matter less than expected, highlighting a generational tension between pro-environmental ideals and persistent consumeristic tendencies. By illuminating these motivational pathways, the authors provide a nuanced explanation of the CC paradox (Guyader, 2024), showing how platforms that promise environmental gains often end up fueling the very consumption they aim to temper. Their work deepens our understanding of how education interacts with marketplace behavior and offers a compelling foundation for future efforts to design, teach and promote more genuinely sustainable patterns of consumption.Based on 45 phenomenological interviews in Lagos, Ehidiamen et al. (2026) shine light on informal ride sharing – an everyday mobility practice that predates digital platforms and remains pervasive in developing urban contexts. The authors uncover how deeply rooted cultural sharing values shape who shares rides, why they do so and under what conditions they avoid it. Their analysis reveals four interlinked sub-dimensions, interdependence, functional value, cultural morality and obligation, which together illuminate the complex interplay of communal norms, practical necessity, moral expectations and hierarchical social structures. Informal rides, they show, are not simply cost-saving arrangements but expressions of collectivist identity, mutual reliance and culturally embedded expectations that can both motivate and discourage participation. Particularly insightful is their identification of generational tensions: while older Lagosians emphasize communal responsibility and moral duty, younger participants increasingly seek autonomy and freedom from “the circle of favors,” often preferring app-based services that create clearer transactional boundaries. By integrating Schwartz’s cultural value orientations with Belk’s and Arnould and Rose’s theorization of sharing and mutuality, the authors offer a nuanced, culturally grounded alternative to Western, platform-centric narratives of the SE. Their work expands the field’s understanding of mobility practices in non-digital contexts and provides valuable implications for policymakers aiming to design transport strategies that respect and leverage local cultural logics rather than displace them.In their mixed-method investigation, Ozanne et al. (2026) bring much-needed behavioral-science rigor to the question of why consumers repair, or fail to repair, the products they own, a practice increasingly recognized as central to circular-economy transitions. They applied the capability, motivation, opportunity and behavior (COM-B) model (Michie and West, 2015) to explore barriers and enablers of repair through a survey (n = 1512), which they complement with rich qualitative insights from repair café participants (n = 23 interviewees). The authors show that repair behavior is shaped less by consumers’ technical capability than by their motivation, both reflective (beliefs, values, environmental concern) and automatic (positive and by social that the sense that repair is expected, or by Their findings reveal a striking high capability, and experience across all repair café on collaborative to for skills, tools or By that the of shifts on and consumer the authors the of this model well beyond its in and social repair as a of CC that on cultural norms, and Their work offers an and for repair and to repair and reduce the that continues to a integrating et al. 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