The collaborative economy and taxi services: Moving towards new business models in Spain

The collaborative economy brings new business models through digital platforms which compete with services that have traditionally been highly regulated. This is the case of the taxi sector. The new business models that have emerged in private passenger transport are mainly based on the customisation opportunities provided by big data, yet the traditional business model followed by the taxi sector is finding it difficult to adapt to these changes in order to remain competitive, as we can observe from a content analysis of news over the last year in Spain. In this paper, we analyse the need to raise these issues through a governance model in which all stakeholders can express their opinions, trying to achieve solutions based on consensus for real deregulation. In order to achieve this consensus, government will need to play a crucial role, despite the fact that it has recently transferred decision-making to regional and local governments.