Determinants Of Shared Consumption And The Mediating Role Of Perceived Sustainability And Trend Orientation:A Comparative Analysis Of Room Sharing And Bike Sharing In The Context Of China

The objective of the study is to explore the determinants of shared consumption.In addition to the determinant factors the study also established the mediating role of perceived sustainability and trend orientation in shared consumption.Further,the study provided a comparative analysis of two different business models of shared consumption,that is,room sharing and bike sharing.Room sharing is referred as consumer to consumer business model and bike sharing is referred as business to consumer business model.The research paradigm chosen for this study is post-positivism and study used a cross-sectional survey design to collect the data from respondents at one point of time.In order to achieve the objective of the study,the two conceptual frameworks based on room sharing and bike sharing have been developed and tested separately.The study followed a case to parameter approach as N:q rule of thumb and followed the 10:1 bound for sample determination and collected the data from almost 430 respondnets for room sharing and 418 for bike sharing which is almost 10:1 ratio.By following the quantitative approach,the data was collected through a structured questionnaire based on the items adopted and adapted from the relevant literature.As the target respondents were Chinese,so the questionnaire was developed in English and then converted in to Chinese language with the help of researchers and back translated to ensure semantic equivalence.The questionnaire was uploaded on sojump that is software in Chinese to collect the data from respondents.The non-probability sampling technique of convenience sampling was used to collect the data.So the questionnaire link was sent to the respondents through official wechat and qq groups.The data collected was analyzed through different analytical techniques through SPSS(Statistical Package for Social Science)and PLS(Partial Least Square)path modeling software.The results reveal that the determinant factors of shared consumption differ in both business models.As the utilitarian value is found to be significant predictor of shared consumption in bike sharing while it was found non-significant in case of room sharing.Similarly,hedonic value was found to be significant predictor of room sharing while non-significant in bike sharing.The most significant determinants in case of room sharing are materialism and hedonic value while in case of bike sharing the security and privacy and perceived ease of use proved to be the best predictors.The smartphone capability and global identity are also found to be significant contributors of shared consumption both in bike sharing and room sharing.The social interactivity of website is also found to be significant predictor of shared consumption in terms of room sharing.Perceived sustainability has no mediation effect in room sharing while in bike sharing perceived sustainability is found to have partial mediation between utilitarian value and shared consumption towards bike sharing.The perceived sustainability was also found to have partial mediation between materialism and shared consumption regarding bike sharing.In room sharing the trend orientation was found to have partial mediation between global identity and shared consumption.The trend orientation is found to have partial mediation between global identity and shared consumption and also between materialism and shared consumption regarding bike sharing.The current study extends its contribution to the literature by explaining the phenomenon through application of different theories and theoretical concepts like self-determination theory,technology acceptance model and social identity theory.The literature on shared consumption is still short of studies which focus on differences in various sectors of shared consumption.Thus,current study fills this gap in literature by providing a comparative analysis of room sharing(C2C)versus bike sharing(B2C).The study also establishes the role of perceived sustainability and trend orientation as mediating variables in the model.The study can also claim the contribution in literature by establishing the role of global identity in predicting the shared consumption.The contribution of the study is many-fold for the practitioners in the field of shared consumption.The comparison of two different forms of shared consumption revealed common elements as well as differences.These differences suggest practitioners to devise strategies carefully while dealing with different forms of sharing.