Sharing alone? The influence of neighbourhood cohesion on willingness to share - a study of Airbnb and Snappcar

Abstract

The aim of this study is to establish to what extent willingness to share is dependent on neighbourhood cohesion. On platforms that operate on a local level, neighbourhood cohesion is expected to increase willingness to share because neighbourhood cohesion has shown to increase trust, which is an important precedent of sharing. Because of the social norms that arise alongside neighbourhood cohesion, bringing people from outside the neighbourhood into the neighbourhood could be perceived as non-desirable. Consequently, neighbourhood cohesion is expected to decrease willingness to share on globally operating platforms. Data are gathered on shared houses and cars, in order to explain supply on a locally operating platform – Snappcar – and on a globally operating platform, namely Airbnb. All data were collected in the city of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in 94 Amsterdam neighbourhoods. Because the dependent variables are count variables, a negative binomial regression was used. The results suggest that there is no relationship between neighbourhood cohesion and supply on Airbnb or Snappcar. While it could still be that trust arises from neighbourhood cohesion, it might not be the type of trust that is a result of neighbourhood cohesion that facilitates sharing.