Trust and Sharing in Online Environments. A Comparative Study of Different Groups of Norwegian Car Sharers

Abstract

Though multiple studies have explored the phenomenon of car sharing, very few have indulged into exploring how different forms of trust varies between users of different business models. We address this research gap through employing quantitative data analyses of car sharers in Norway. Results show that the levels of ingroup and outgroup-trust (i.e., trust towards friends/family or unfamiliar persons) are markedly low for the members of the peer-to-peer scheme (M = 3.4/2.9) as compared to the cooperative (M = 6.0/4.8) and business-to-consumer scheme (M = 5.7/4.4). In contrast, technology-based trust is more important for the P2P sharers (M = 5.8) than cooperative (M = 5.6) and the B2C users (M = 5.6). Our findings echo previous studies, indicating that a different set of institutional logics is driving the transactions at the emerging P2P platforms compared to former non-profit sharing communities.