Sustainability and the sharing economy: Modelling the interconnections

Abstract

Advances in technology have led to the rise of sharing economy, which has become a strong competitor for capitalist companies in various fields. In addition to the economic aspects of such phenomenon, the activities of the sharing economy can have social and environmental impacts, which brings sustainability pillars into mind. In this paper, based on the system thinking approach, a causal loop diagram that is a part of system dynamics modelling is applied for visualizing the relationships between sharing economy and sustainability pillars. The reinforcing and balancing loops modelled show the dynamics in the system, which help decision makers to gain a deeper and more accurate understanding of the current and potential future mutual interactions between the sharing economy and sustainability.