Putting the sharing economy into perspective

- We provide a definition of the sharing economy.
- We discuss the economic, environmental and social impacts of the sharing economy.
- We discuss the current regulatory principles that governments apply.
- We go into possible alternatives to the current commercial sharing platforms.

We develop a conceptual framework that allows us to define the sharing economy and its close cousins and we understand its sudden rise from an economic-historic perspective. We then assess the sharing economy platforms in terms of the economic, social and environmental impacts. We end with reflections on current regulations and future alternatives, and suggest a number of future research questions.