Sharing cars, homes or professional services has a name: sharing economy. It's not a trend, but an economic sector that is worth more and more.
Technology now enables us to share cars, homes and professional services. Platforms such as Blablacar and Airbnb are primarily useful for splitting costs, but they can also be a way to travel more flexibly and perhaps to socialise. We are not talking merely about a trend, but about a fully fledged economic sector known as the sharing economy, or collaborative economy.
As is often the case when a sector is evolving at breakneck speed, there is still no single definition of the sharing economy (the Italian translation is "economia collaborativa" or "economia della condivisione"). The book that theorises this approach is entitled "What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption" and was published by entrepreneurs Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers in 2010. Its pages explain that the sharing economy promotes forms of conscious consumption, based no longer on the ownership and purchase of goods, but on access and use.
The economic crisis certainly played an important role in the birth and spread of this model, which optimises resources, cuts costs and lowers the economic barriers to accessing certain goods and services. Consider sailing holidays, for instance, which are traditionally a luxury but, when shared, become affordable for virtually everyone. On the one hand, then, there is the need to save money and make the best use of resources. On the other, there are new technologies, without which none of this would be possible. But there is another factor too: people no longer want to feel like mere passive consumers, and are increasingly seeking to carve out space for choice and participation.
This sector, according to a report produced by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the European Commission, is making enormous strides. Overall, in 2015 alone, platforms in Europe reached revenues of 4 billion euros. And not only that: they also facilitated transactions with a total value of 28 billion euros. The research focused on five key sectors.
Transport takes the lion's share. The revenues of platforms such as Blablacar and Uber, which allow people to share journeys and cars, reached 1.6 billion euros in 2015. And they facilitated economic transactions worth more than 5 billion.
The ferment is such that it has also given rise to more niche services, such as Clubsharing, the car-pooling platform dedicated to music fans. With this platform, young people and older people alike can arrange to go to a concert together. This means not only finding a lift (and, on the other side, reducing travel costs), but also meeting someone with whom to share the experience.
In Sweden there is even a platform that connects drivers looking for a charging point for their electric vehicle with private individuals willing to share their home charging station. It is called Elbnb and is promoted by Renault. Travellers access the app on their smartphone and consult a map of registered members, showing the location, capacity, opening hours and costs of the nearest stations.
The sharing economy is booming above all in the field of tourism. It is no coincidence that platforms for making an unused room in one's home available to travellers (such as Airbnb and Couchsurfing) earned a full 1.1 billion euros in 2015 and, more interestingly still, facilitated economic transactions worth more than 15 billion. That is more than half of the total at Community level.
Alongside the more conventional home and room sharing and exchange services, some more unusual experiments have also been proposed. Such as Mini living forests, a kind of shared garden. This is an installation presented in September in the heart of Shoreditch, one of London's most creative neighbourhoods. Green spaces contained within three cuboid installations, where anyone can sit or take a stroll. And, above all, where anyone can share the greenery by bringing a potted plant and taking another one in exchange.
People who live alone in particular often find themselves struggling to get through some minor domestic chore that, however trivial, requires a minimum of expertise. Small repairs, furniture to assemble or move, dripping taps. Or perhaps the need for a babysitter, some English tutoring ahead of a spell abroad, or a second-hand bicycle. In short, all manner of small issues for which it often does not make sense to turn to a proper company: what is needed in many cases is the genuine help of a relative or a neighbour. Where personal connections fall short, apps step in, such as Vicinidicasa, Mariti in Affitto and similar services.
Overall, transactions on these sharing economy platforms reached 1.9 billion euros in 2015.
When talking about the collaborative economy in the economic and financial sphere, the reference is mainly to two worlds. The first is that of crowdfunding platforms, through which virtually anything can be financed "from the ground up", by means of individual donations. Technological innovations such as the first mass-produced solar car, to be manufactured in Germany, or the most advanced hi-tech bicycle lock have crowdfunding to thank. As do countless albums, films, documentaries and shows.
The second world is that of peer-to-peer lending. One example is London-based Funding Circle, one of Europe's sixteen billion-dollar startups. This is a marketplace through which individual investors can make loans to small businesses, bypassing banks, with a faster service and more favourable terms. Since its founding in 2010, Funding Circle has already issued around 1 billion in loans to 8,000 businesses in England and the US.
In the finance sector, sharing economy platforms in Europe have relatively low revenues (250 million euros), but transactions are worth far more, reaching 5.2 billion.
Any takeaway pizzeria needs a menu, laid out professionally. Anyone who opens a website to promote their business will sooner or later need to have it translated into at least English, if not other languages. A startup will certainly need someone to manage its accounts and keep track of invoices and payments. Two engaged people about to get married need to print their wedding invitations, perhaps with a nice illustration. All these cases have something in common: professional skills are required, which must be properly compensated, yet at the same time one cannot afford to hire someone on a permanent basis. To break the deadlock, on sites such as Twago or Upwork it is possible to find freelancers to whom graphic design, accounting, web development and similar services can be entrusted. In Europe these platforms are still taking their first steps and in 2015 they brought in "only" 100 million euros, but it can be expected that they are destined to grow quickly.
But the even more important thing, according to PwC, is that sharing models are beginning to change people's habits, encouraging them, for example, to travel more. Among the 25-to-39 age group, one in three Europeans has used a sharing economy service at least once. "Collaborative consumption and the collaborative economy are changing the way we live, work and consume, to create a more sustainable future," declared April Rinne, one of the world's leading experts on the collaborative economy.
And we are only at the beginning. According to the study, by 2025 the platforms in these five sectors will bring in over 80 billion euros and transactions will be worth as much as 570 billion. But European institutions will need to play their part, working to build a solid and adequate regulatory framework.