With collaborative consumption, consumers no longer own a good, but temporarily have access to this good. When these consumers use resources provided by others, they are individually better off when they make use of the shared resources without contributing in return, harming the community. With no regulation this often leads to problems between consumers and providers of the good.

It is assumed that different models of collaborative consumption (business-to-consumer, peer-to-peer, self-regulating communities) are characterized by different kinds of power (coercive and legitimate) and different kinds of trust (implicit and reason-based), and therefore have an impact on the cooperation of consumers.

To investigate differences between models, we apply the slippery slope framework (Gangl et al., 2015; Kirchler et al., 2008) which highlights the dynamic between power and trust and thereby offers a theoretical framework. We will use a multi-method approach (focus groups, online questionnaire, laboratory experiments, field experiment), investigating how power of authorities providing collaborative goods impact trust, and cooperation.

Research Questions

The project will adress the following research questions:

• What kind of power do consumers perceive with different forms of collaborative consumption?

• What kind of trust do consumers perceive with collaborative consumption?

• Which relations and moderator variables can be detected within the different collaborative consumption models?

• How does wielded coercive and legitimate power as well as different collaborative consumption models influence reason-based and implicit trust in authorities and fellow users and the degree of cooperation?

Figure 1: Slippery slope framework (adapted from Gangl et al., 2015)