Community Structure and Collaborative Consumption: A Routine Activity Approach

More than a quarter of a century has passed since Hawley (1950) first presented his human ecological theory of community structure, a theory emphasizing the structure of sustenance activities. Yet we know of no effort to apply that theory to consumption even though it is clearly a human sustenance activity. We believe that Hawley's framework offers much more than an opportunity to translate old theories into new terms, since it also provides a means of thinking about consumer activities as they related to one another and to other activities in social life. This paper is concerned specifically with acts of collaborative consumpt ion , namely, those events in which one or more persons consume economic goods or services in the process of engaging in joint activities with one or more others.' For example, drinking beer with friends, eating meals with relatives, driving to visit someone or using a washing machine for family laundry are acts of collaborative consumption. Thus our present concern goes beyond the discrete preferences and resources of individual consumers. Rather, we take these considerations as given and proceed to examine how the structure of daily activities creates the circumstances in which collaborative consumption occurs, hence al-