Research pick: Share and share alike - "A bibliometric analysis of COVID-19’s impact on the sharing economy"

How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect the so-called sharing economy? A bibliometric analysis published in the International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology finds the answer.

There is a growing body of research literature that has investigated the impact of the pandemic on many different aspects of life. Jian Feng and Zhenfeng Liu of the Shanghai Maritime University in Shanghai, China, have focused on the literature published that reports on the sharing economy. They used data from the Web of Science covering the years before the pandemic (2008 to 2019) and the pandemic years (2020 to 2021) to reveal what they refer to as the research themes, scholarly communities, evolution paths, and research hotspots in this developing area of social science.

Despite the idea of sharing being as old as humanity, the term “sharing economy” was most likely coined only in 2008 by Stanford Law School professor, Lawrence Lessig, although the term may well have been used prior to his work. The sharing economy is now generally understood to refer to those novel entrants into industry and various marketplaces that have disrupted the received wisdom about commerce and occasionally usurped the conventional business models. For instance, organisations such as Airbnb in hospitality, Uber and DiDi in transportation, Gridmates in energy, MediCast in health, WeWork in office work, and MakeSpace in logistics.

The Shanghai study revealed that four new research themes were updated, perhaps not unexpectedly, including research into COVID-19 itself in the second tranche of research papers. The team explains that COVID-19 affected not only traditional sectors, such as accommodation, tourism, and transportation but also had an impact on luxury sharing, fashion rental, logistics, food delivery, and the festivals industry.

The team points out that despite the misery, morbidity, and mortality associated with COVID-19 it also represents a transformational point in economics whereby sustainable development goals might be approached more rapidly than in the pre-pandemic era, at least in terms of those companies and organisations in the sharing economy. It remains that the ongoing pandemic is forever presenting new problems and challenges for digital technologies, risk management, supply chain, operation management, and technological innovation among the companies of the sharing economy and their stakeholders. Nevertheless, the inherently innovative nature of such companies means they are quick to rise to those challenges.

Feng, J. and Liu, Z. (2022) ‘A bibliometric analysis of COVID-19’s impact on the sharing economy’, Int. J. Web Engineering and Technology, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp.170–202.