Photo by Andriy Baranskyy under a Creative Commons license from Flickr.
Eager for the sharing economy to bloom in Vancouver, Chris Diplock, co-founder of the Vancouver Tool Library, designed the first research project to measure and report on people’s interest in the sharing economy at a municipal scale. He called it The Sharing Project. Diplock’s primary goals were to understand Vancouverites’ attitudes toward sharing, to measure the demand for shared assets in the city, and to highlight opportunities for growth within the sharing economy.
Through interviews, focus groups, and a survey of over 500 individuals, The Sharing Project focused on the lending and borrowing of physical goods in the following categories: transportation, physical media, recreation, event and entertainment equipment, tools, household appliances, clothing, and space. Other forms of sharing, including skill sharing, were not assessed.
The Sharing Project found that a large majority of Vancouverites share. 73% of respondents said that they currently share through a community organization, 85% report sharing with peers, and over the next three to five years, more than 50% of Vancouverites say they expect to share more. Surprisingly, people’s age and type of residence did not significantly influence their attitude toward sharing.
With such high levels of sharing in Vancouver, it would be easy to assume that people are familiar with new models of sharing, such as coworking or peer-to-peer car sharing. But that doesn’t appear to be the case. For over 60% of survey respondents, the word “sharing” brought to mind long-established communal resources, such as libraries and public parks—only some associated the word with bike sharing, car sharing, or other new sharing models. In fact, less than 10% of respondents use an online service, such as Airbnb, to facilitate sharing with peers.
Our intuition might lead us to believe that trust, convenience, and access have an impact on people’s willingness to share, and The Sharing Project’s research confirms that those three factors have the greatest influence on people’s willingness to both lend and borrow. Peers are usually cited as the most trustworthy, convenient, and accessible source for shared goods, yet when respondents chose to borrow from a community organization or company, 44% of them made that choice becuase they didn't want to bother their friends or neighbors.
Another strong influence on respondents’ willingness to lend was the prospect of building social relationships. Over half of all respondents preferred to lend or rent directly from another person; less than 43% of respondents preferred to use an online service to facilitate the transaction. The only factor found to decrease people’s willingness to lend was personal attachment.
Vancouverites seem poised to participate in the burgeoning sharing economy, even though the trend is not yet widely recognized. As such, one opportunity identified by The Sharing Project is for new sharing-based services to collaborate with established sharing organizations, such as libraries, to help grow the movement and build awareness and trust. Entrepreneurs and grassroots organizers can use The Sharing Project report to develop additional insight as sharing becomes a necessity for the social, financial, and environmental well-being of Vancouver. Other cities can follow Vancouver's lead in researching the opportunities to share as a starting point to grow local sharing economies.
