1 The Sharing Economy in Europe: From Idea to Reality Cristina Miguel, Gabriela Avram, Andrzej Klimczuk, Bori Simonovits, Bálint Balázs, and Vida Česnuitytė
Introduction The ‘collaborative economy’ (or ‘sharing economy,’ as it is widely called) is best known for facilitating peer-to-peer exchanges through the means of digital platforms and mobile communication. As Gansky (2010) put it, the sharing economy is an idealised state characterised by the shift from ownership to renting, bartering, or gifting. Some authors argue for ‘collaborative economies,’ as this is an umbrella term incorporating many different stakeholder categories, business models, and forms of work, C. Miguel (B) Department of Applied IT, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden e-mail: cristina.miguel@ait.gu.se G. Avram University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland e-mail: Gabriela.Avram@ul.ie A. Klimczuk SGH Warsaw School of Economics, Warsaw, Poland e-mail: aklimcz@sgh.waw.pl © The Author(s) 2022 V. Česnuitytė et al. (eds.), The Sharing Economy in Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86897-0_1
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