From offline to online collaboration: theoretical approach on human cooperation studies and the sharing economy
Abstrakt
Since the mid-60's, several scientific approaches based on social experiments, observational techniques and ethnographic methodologies have been issued seeking to explore and understand (offline) human behaviours in terms of cooperation and community building as well as selfish rational actions. However, over the last decade, an innovative socio-economic system, technologically driven and entirely based on online platforms, the sharing economy, appears to disrupt stablished manners of collaboration.
This study considers that, given the novelty of the sharing economy, there is still a lack of empirical studies attempting to compare and connect both offline and online forms of acting together. Thus, the main goal of this paper is to understand to what extent relevant theories on human cooperation, formulated from 1965 onwards, might be suitable for explaining the collaborative behaviour of the digitally driven sharing economy.