The sharing economy in transitions: legitimation dynamics in the urban mobility context in Fortaleza, Brazil

Abstract

Despite the growing literature on the sharing economy, legitimacy issues in this specific field are still little studied, while the debate on its controversial results grows. In this sense, the objective of the thesis was to understand the legitimation process of innovations performing in the context of the sharing economy from the perspective of the different actors involved. We orchestrated the main literature on the business model approach, legitimacy theory, and transitions perspective then put the sharing economy into the structure. From this literature review, we proposed that sharing economy ventures are based on innovative business models building up internal momentum and adding stability in technological niches while interacting with institutionalized rules of the incumbent socio-technical regime. Such rules could represent a set of legitimacy requirements that new business models have to meet, transform or replace in order to emerge and stabilize. An integrative theoretical framework was proposed that provided guidelines for empirical work, since the contents and meanings of its relationships and constructs – that is, legitimacy mechanisms – were not yet known. Based on a qualitative, interpretivist approach, and adopting a discovery-oriented research posture, a multiple case study was conducted in the context of urban mobility in Fortaleza, Brazil. Three cases were selected: an electric car sharing system (Vamo Fortaleza) and two bicycle sharing systems (Bicicletar and Bicicleta Integrada). For reliability purposes, data were collected from a variety of sources, such as documents, observations and in-depth interviews with users, policymakers and partner companies’ managers. Regarding the theoretical contributions of the research, our findings confirmed or advanced the current literature in that (i) business models are valuable tools to deal with legitimation challenges since some actors managed their components to meet the legitimacy requirements that innovations needed to stabilize; (ii) public sector actors use business models as managerial tools to accelerate urban transitions to sustainability; (iii) landscape developments are not homogeneous, but an arrangement of heterogeneous forces influencing both developing niche innovations and the dimensions of the socio-technical regime; (iv) with regard to niche-regime interactions, new business models can undertake a symbiotic (“fit-and-conform”) strategy with one or more dimensions of the incumbent regime while maintaining a disruptive (“stretch-and-transform”) position relative to others; and (v) the interplayed approach of business models and legitimacy theory from the transitions perspective can give analysts the ability to capture dynamics from both strategic and institutional views of legitimacy. On the empirical contributions, the content analysis also showed that (vi) due to the interaction between diverse interests and expectations of different groups of actors, sponsored business models in the sharing economy can achieve only a balanced legitimacy, that is, an equilibrium degree from which any gain in legitimacy for one group will necessarily be extracted from another; (vii) the main determinants of balanced legitimacy of sharing-based business models were: the interests of each group of actors, network logic, complementary infrastructure, maintenance issues, station balancing process, and system reliability; (viii) policymakers are very influential actors for urban transitions, as they have directly engaged in regulatory matters, technological and business model innovations, infrastructure efforts, educational policies and awareness campaigns aimed at transforming habits and ultimately the culture for more sustainable urban mobility. We also discussed implications and limitations of the study and proposed an agenda for future research.