The Impact of Trust on Public Participation in Sharing Economies

From a survey of public participation in a sharing economy, the authors extracted from the factor analysis on a questionnaire three factors: particularised trust, generalised trust and institutional trust. The authors also classified three categories of sharing economy and utilised a structural equation model to study the impact of trust on public participation in the different types. The general observation made is that trust helps to increase public desire to participate in a sharing economy. Compared with participants in a narrow sharing economy, particularised trust and generalised trust increased the public desire to participate in a generalised sharing economy. In contrast to participating in the low trust-based demand-side (LTBD) sharing economy, particularised trust and generalised trust promote greater public participation in the high trust-based demand-side (HTBD) sharing economy. It is also noteworthy that institutional trust has a positive impact on a low trust-based demand-side sharing economy. Based on the findings, two policy recommendations are offered.