The Sharing Economy and Business Model Design: A Configurational Approach

The rapid growth of the sharing economy has attracted a recent surge of academic interest. However, few studies to date address performance variation among sharing platforms. Building on the notion of business model design and applying a configurational approach, we develop a conceptual model that investigates what combinations of design elements can enhance the performance of sharing platforms. Data from 189 platforms and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) reveal six business model designs, each with its own performance implications. Of these, four configurations lead to high performance and two lead to low performance. Our study advances current understanding of the sharing economy and sheds important light on business model research.