Bying, renting and sharing: investigating new forms of acquisition

Currently, the “sharing economy” is considered one of the top business trends. The last several years have witnessed incredible growth in commercial ventures in this domain. Particularly in the fields of transportation, accommodation, and rentals, sharing economy entities are proving to be able to lead the industry away from traditional economy players. For instance, Airbnb is predicted to overtake Hilton in number of rooms booked. However, there is no generally accepted definition of what activities really constitute the sharing economy. Accordingly, the contributions to this special issue represent an important attempt to provide both a sample and a summary of the recent developments in the understanding of the sharing economy and examples of investigations of both situational and dispositional factors that may affect individuals’ intentions to buy, to rent or to use alternative acquisition forms. While individual contributions may address one specific empirical problem or case study and might purposely adopt one specific theoretical perspective, taken together, they offer a multi-disciplinary view of the sharing economy, provide new empirical evidence about this important phenomenon, fill various gaps in the literature, and allow for a better appreciation of the complexity and dynamism of this intriguing concept.