ICT-Enabled Sharing Economy and Environmental Sustainability - A Resource-Oriented Approach

Information and communication technology (ICT) has transformed our consumption patterns. The widespread use of smart devices has enabled practicing a wide variety of “sharing economy” activities, a development that brings new ways of resource consumption to our everyday life. The increasing participation in sharing economy activities calls for studies that research the sustainability of this new consumption trend. Although the concept is associated with a more collaborative resource consumption, this may in practice be limited to some resources being shared. The present paper sets the stage for better understanding of the ICT-enabled sharing economy in the context of environmental sustainability. In this work, we present a line of thought that starts with perceiving resource sharing as the core of the sharing economy and continue with a sustainability analysis using a conceptual framework of ICT impacts on sustainability. This study provides a first step towards conceptualizing the sharing economy in a sustainability context and delineates further analysis of the sustainability of digital sharing.