The objective of this special issue is to expand our understanding of the sharing economy. To this end, we consider how the sharing economy can be demarcated and provide a definition that distinguishes the sharing economy from other forms of economic organization and resource orchestration. Specifically, the sharing economy entails multisided platforms that facilitate user access to – rather than ownership of – assets that are rivalrous in their use, and that are not owned by said platforms. Using this definition, we identify and show how the sharing economy creates and distributes economic value among participants and we summarize the six articles in the special issue. All in all, this introduction and the six studies clarify how the sharing economy and its three main constituencies – sharing platforms, asset providers, and users – reduce commercial friction by increasing trust, facilitating interaction, easing resource access and orchestration, and maximizing ecosystem-wide value.

中文翻译：

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共享经济的独特领域：定义、价值创造和研究意义

本期特刊旨在扩大我们对共享经济的理解。为此，我们考虑如何界定共享经济，并提供一个定义，将共享经济与其他形式的经济组织和资源编排区分开来。具体而言，共享经济需要多边平台，促进用户访问（而不是拥有）在使用中具有竞争性且不属于上述平台所有的资产. 使用这个定义，我们识别并展示了共享经济如何在参与者之间创造和分配经济价值，并总结了特刊中的六篇文章。总而言之，这篇介绍和六项研究阐明了共享经济及其三个主要支持者——共享平台、资产提供商和用户——如何通过增加信任、促进互动、简化资源访问和协调以及最大化生态系统来减少商业摩擦——广泛的价值。