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What future for collaborative consumption? A practice theoretical account

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Journal of Cleaner Production cover image
Journal of Cleaner Production cover image

1. What future for collaborative consumption? A practice theoretical account

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Walter Fraanje a, b, *, Gert Spaargaren a

a Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, 6706 KN Wageningen, Gelderland, the Netherlands

b Food Climate Research Network, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK

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1.1. ARTICLE INFO

1.1.1. Article history:

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Received 15 January 2018

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Received in revised form

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22 August 2018

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Accepted 24 September 2018

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Available online 24 September 2018

1.1.2. Keywords:

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Collaborative consumption

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Practice theory

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Social change

1.2. ABSTRACT

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Collaborative consumption indicates the emergence and rapid spread of a new set of consumption practices. Originally praised as an antidote to an unsustainable market economy, there is growing concern that collaborative consumption increasingly follows a conventional market rationality of payments and profits, thereby undermining its initial social and 'civil society' aspects. This article investigates the future of collaborative consumption through case studies of the Peerby and MyWheels platforms, which represent new social practices of borrowing and renting. We use the sociological theories of Theodore Schatzki and Randall Collins to analyse the key factors that determine the present and future trajectories of these practices. We show how human agency and emotions in a dynamic between companies, practices, and practitioners are crucial in shaping the future of collaborative consumption. The findings suggest two diverging trajectories: one that sticks to the social aspects of connecting people through sharing things, and another that heads towards impersonal forms of collaborative consumption. The latter is primarily organized by companies, which introduce new rules (payments and insurances) and technologies (drones and autonomous vehicles) to make the shared use of things more fast, efficient, and profitable.

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© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1.3. 1. Introduction

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Collaborative consumption and the notion of a 'sharing economy' have been the subject of a lively societal and academic debate about the future of consumption for several years now. Collaborative consumption practices combine elements from the spheres of 'civil society' and 'the market', which makes (some of) them appeal to many people (Guttentag, 2015; Schor and Fitzmaurice, 2015). The rapid emergence and spread of this group of practices and their (supposed) promises for sustainability make collaborative consumption an interesting topic for sustainable consumption studies. However, collaborative consumption has quickly become controversial, and has received at least as much critique as praise regarding its impacts upon people, planet, and profits (Slee, 2017). In particular, it is unclear what trajectories collaborative consumption practices may follow: will they be "a pathway to

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sustainability or a nightmarish form of neoliberalism?" (Martin, 2016).

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Collaborative consumption is often used in conjunction with the notion of a 'sharing economy'. Global attention to this 'new economy' was sparked by the work of Lisa Gansky (2010) and Botsman and Rogers (2011), who identified the rapid emergence of a set of practices which, they thought, would lead to a more sustainable economy. They argued that the emergence of this 'sharing economy' indicates a fundamental shift in how we consume, and shows the transformation of an ownership-based economy towards one based on access and the shared use of things (Botsman and Rogers, 2011, p. 97; Rifkin, 2001). This economy was thought to accommodate the so-called 'triple bottom line' of people, planet, and profits: sharing would encourage the use of under-utilized goods thereby reducing the production needs (planet), stimulate interactions among citizens (people), and create new economic opportunities (profit) (Botsman and Rogers, 2011). Each of these promises, however, has been criticized. Increased access to a good may for instance lead to more use and higher use-related environmental impacts (Verboven and Vanherck, 2016), sharing platforms may reinforce existing inequalities (Schor et al., 2016), and

* Corresponding author. Food Climate Research Network, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK

E-mail addresses: walter.fraanje@fcrn.org.uk (W. Fraanje), gert.spaargaren@wur.nl (G. Spaargaren).

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the companies of the sharing economy may undermine job security (Göss et al., 2016).

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We understand collaborative consumption as a subset of the overarching 'sharing economy' (Belk, 2014; Hamari et al., 2016; Huber, 2017), which includes practices as using Zipcar, Airbnb, Uber, and Couchsurfing. A decisive element of collaborative consumption practices is their dependence on online platforms to facilitate and organize instant exchanges of products and services between large numbers of people, who are generally unacquainted to one another. In line with this, collaborative consumption can be defined as "the peer-to-peer-based activity of obtaining, giving, or sharing the access to goods and services, coordinated through community-based online services" (Hamari et al., 2016). Both lending and borrowing via Peerby and car sharing via MyWheels fit this definition, although we will see that the MyWheels practice combines peer-to-peer renting (a form of collaborative consumption) with business-to-peer renting (belonging to the wider sharing economy).

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The online platforms and digital technologies underlying collaborative consumption facilitate new social relations, new ways of interacting, and indeed new kinds of social practices. The organizations operating the platforms have diverse motivations and ambitions. They include a mix of for-profits and non-profits with a wide variety of business-models. As many of them are backed up by massive investments by venture capitalists (Stephany, 2015; Sundararajan, 2016), there is a growing concern that collaborative consumption practices may develop into a 'big business model' for profit-driven companies, thereby potentially undermining the social and environmental promises collaborative consumption originally pretended to have (Cheng, 2016; Martin et al., 2015). How these organizations operate their platforms and try to impact upon collaborative consumption practices will be crucial to the future of collaborative consumption practices.

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Changes in the way collaborative consumption practices are performed may affect their attractiveness to current and potential participants. For example, the introduction of a new reputation system, or of payments in a practice that was previously free, may reorganize the practice in such a way that it alters the emotions (e.g. the sense of trust) that participants experience in the practice (Ert et al., 2016; Keymolen, 2013; Resnick and Zeckhauser, 2002; Schor and Fitzmaurice, 2015). Accordingly, change in the way activities are organized in a practice can affect whether participants will be 'energized' to participate again. To understand how the phenomenon of collaborative consumption may develop, we need a deeper insight into these types of dynamics. This requires, first, to understand how collaborative consumption practices are performed, and what makes them attractive to their participants. Secondly, we need to understand how related practices, in particular those performed by the companies, may impact upon the practice, and affect how it is performed and to whom it makes sense to participate.

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In recent years, practice theorists have started to elaborate on the performance, embeddedness, and change of social practices. They understand the everyday doings and sayings of ordinary people as central to larger societal dynamics of reproducing and changing societal structures, such as those in sustainability transitions in the fields of food and energy (Shove, 2010; Spaargaren et al., 2013; Warde, 2005). Building on this body of scholarship, this article uses practice theories to investigate how empirical manifestations of collaborative consumption relate to sustainability transitions and the dynamics of social change in contemporary modernity. Several studies have addressed collaborative consumption and the 'sharing economy' from different practice theoretical perspectives – either by drawing upon Bourdieusian practice theory (Herbert and Collin-Lachaud, 2017; Schor and

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Fitzmaurice, 2015) or by using the three-elements model by Shove and colleagues (Huber, 2017; Kent and Dowling, 2013; Piscicelli et al., 2015a, 2015b). This study contributes to this literature by using Schatzki (2011, 2002, 1996) practice theory and Collins (2004) theory of interaction ritual chains, which draw our attention to human agency and emotions in changing practices. In the following section, we introduce a practice theoretical model of social change. After a brief methodological outline in the third section, we apply this model to two case studies (Peerby and MyWheels). In the final section, we reflect on our findings and suggest two potential futures for collaborative consumption. One is directed towards connecting people through sharing things. The other one focuses on making sharing things efficient, and profitable.

1.4. 2. A practice theoretical account of social change

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Practice theories (Bourdieu, 1990, 1977; Giddens, 1984; Rouse, 2007; Schatzki, 2002) are part of a growing body of literature about everyday life and the reproduction of social order. In the field of sustainable consumption, practice theories are used to study social change with a focus on sustainability transitions (Schatzki, 2016; Shove et al., 2012; Welch and Warde, 2015).

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Social practices (such as cycling, shopping and eating) are commonly understood among practice theorists as 'routinized types of behaviour' (Reckwitz, 2002) or as 'organized nexuses of doings and sayings' (Schatzki, 2002) that are performed by people (hence the adjective 'social'). Underpinning most, if not all, practice theories is the intuition that the everyday life of people consists of a range of interrelated social practices, many of which are recurring at particular times and places while following up or preceding other practices (Reckwitz, 2002; Shove et al., 2012). For practice theories, then, social order results from the reproduction of social practices, whereas social change takes place when social practices are performed in new ways, when people adopt other practices, or when they connect different practices in innovative ways (Giddens, 1984; Nicolini, 2012; Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 2002).

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In the remainder of this section, we will outline a practice theoretical model of social change based on Schatzki's practice theory and Collins' theory of interaction ritual chains. In our analysis, we use the distinction between practices as performances and practices as embedded entities (Schatzki, 1996; Shove et al., 2012). Underpinning our conceptual model is the idea that practices follow trajectories, which consist of changes in how they are performed and embedded. To substantiate this claim, we first discuss performances (2.1), then the embeddedness (2.2) and, lastly, trajectories of social practices (2.3).

1.4.1. 2.1. Performances

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Every time you hire a cab via Uber (engage in the Uber practice), you follow a similar set of doings (e.g. first starting the Uber app and then entering your destination) and sayings (having a chat with the driver). Moreover, every participant in the Uber practice (clients and drivers) will roughly need to follow the same organization of doings and sayings to accomplish the ends that are implied in the practice (e.g. the client reaches their destination while the driver and the Uber platform earn a certain amount of money).

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According to Schatzki, the organization of a social practice consists of a collection of interlinked rules, understandings and what he calls 'teleoaffective structures' (Schatzki, 2002, 1996). Rules refer to explicit principles, precepts, and instructions that guide the doings and sayings in a practice. Understandings denote both the skills and know-hows that are assumed in a practice as well as general understandings of the world which pertain to the meaning of a practice. Lastly, the concept of 'teleoaffective

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structure' concerns both teleological (goal- and end-oriented) as well as affective (e.g. pertaining to feelings, emotions, and passions) aspects of social practices. Schatzki defines teleoaffective structure as "a range of normativized and hierarchically ordered ends, projects, and tasks, to varying degrees allied with normativized emotions and even moods" (Schatzki, 2002, p. 80). This structure not only directs which aims participants should pursue or how they should execute tasks, but also concerns 'feeling rules' (Hochschild, 1983) that prescribe which emotions participants experience when being in the practice.

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Schatzki characterises participating in a practice as operating in an arena where actions and ends are prescribed, correct, or acceptable on certain occasions (Schatzki, 2002, p. 75). Because they operate in this arena, participants are by definition subject to its organization. But, what they do (i.e. their agency) is not fully determined by this organization. Instead, practices influence practical intelligibility, or 'what makes sense to a person to do', by 'molding' a person's features (e.g. her or his ends, feelings, and emotions) (Schatzki, 2002, pp. 74–75). This happens for instance when participants learn and get instructions to perform a practice or when new rules and sanctions demand from participants that they start to act in new ways. This difference between a practice's organization and its participants' practical intelligibility, moreover, highlights the contingency of the relation between a practice and its participants. For instance, when dominant actors impose new rules to the practice, participants may leave the practice, or they may remonstrate and stick to the old doings and sayings. Alternatively, participants may for example change the understandings that order a practice by developing innovative skills, thereby making the practice more easy and interesting to many new participants. This shows that human agency is both enacted through practices and channelled by the organization of practices.

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Building on Schatzki's theory and zooming in on the emotional dimensions of practices, Weenink and Spaargaren (2016) used the work of Randall Collins (2004) to argue that 'emotional energy' is a key factor in the relationship between social practices and their participants. Collins describes emotional energy as 'feelings of confidence, strength, enthusiasm, and desire for action', which are experienced by participants during and after the performance of a practice (or in Collins' language an 'interaction ritual') (Collins, 2004, p. 42). Emotional energy is an attribute of practices and is produced by two or more participants in a process of emotional and bodily attunement. Collins describes people as 'emotional energy seekers' who move from practice to practice, thereby gaining variable amounts of emotional energy, which is (re)produced through the practices they participate in (Collins, 2004, p. 157). The more emotional energy they gain from a practice, the more attractive it becomes to return to this practice in future. Besides emotional energy, Collins argues, interaction rituals (or practices) also produce feelings of group membership, standards of morality, and symbols (Collins, 2004, p. 48). The latter are of special relevance when it comes to the relation between practices and their participants. Symbols are ideas, words, images, objects, gestures, etc. that participants feel associated with collectively (Collins, 2004, p. 49). When these symbols pop up in other practices or in new performances of the same practices, participants are directed towards them. Collins, accordingly, describes symbols and people as the two poles of a battery (Collins, 2004, p. 38). Both poles connect during the performance of a practice and cause a flow of emotional energy that is experienced by the participants and renews their sensitivity to the symbols.

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Besides their normative and prescribing role in social practices, emotions excite and energize people to keep performing old practices or start performing new ones – such as environmentally friendly and collaborative consumption practices (Spaargaren,

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2011). Collins' theory furthermore underpins the idea that the organization of social practices influences the decisions of participants to (not) participate in a specific practice. When the properties of an interaction ritual change and other symbols take centre stage in a practice, this may affect the attractiveness of the practice for its (potential, future) participants. Taken together, the arguments of Schatzki and Collins suggest that people's agency is shaped (but not fully determined) by their participation in (previous) practices, while this participation itself affects which future performances of practices it makes sense for them to enact.

1.4.2. 2.2. Embeddedness

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When studying practices as entities, we analyse them as entities that are embedded in sets of other social practices and 'material arrangements' (Schatzki, 2011). Schatzki defines the latter as "interconnected human bodies, organisms, artifacts, and things" through and amidst which social life transpires (Schatzki, 2016, 2002, p. 38).

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In theory, a practice has infinite relations to other practices and arrangements, but when looking at collaborative consumption practices, there is arguably a range of practices and arrangements that are of special significance for studying social change. In the field of sustainable consumption studies, one set that is of special significance to a particular practice of consumption is sometimes referred to as the 'system of provision' (Fine and Leopold, 1993; Spaargaren and Van Vliet, 2000). Systems of provision service a consumption practice and provide it with the different elements that are essential to its performance and reproduction. Within systems of provision, the organizations (e.g. MyWheels, Peerby, Uber, Airbnb) that initiate and moderate collaborative consumption platforms constitute a special group, as they are purposively, intentionally, and deliberately targeted at constituting, facilitating, and changing the collaborative consumption practices. In other words, the employees of these organizations enact their agency, which is shaped by the organization of the practices they perform, to impact upon the collaborative consumption practices. Including for example management and governance practices (Schatzki, 2016; Shove et al., 2012), their practices can have a powerful impact on the way collaborative consumption practices are organized. For instance, when an organization installs new rules according to which the practice should be performed, or when it adds or cuts out functionality from the platform and thereby influences the teleoaffective structure of the practice. Accordingly, studying the embeddedness of social practices connects agency and power in the analysis of social change.

1.4.3. 2.3. Trajectories

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Our discussion of the performance and embeddedness of social practices makes clear that a practice develops in relation with other practices and arrangements, and that human agency and (also institutionalized) power are central to how this development takes shape. Furthermore, we saw that change in the organization of a practice, can impact upon the relation between a practice and its participants. Participants may start to remonstrate against new rules that are imposed on them, they may leave the practice, or start to perform it at different times, with different frequencies, or towards different ends. Alternatively, change in its organization may also make a practice more attractive to both established and new participants. Lastly, we have highlighted two avenues through which the organization of a collaborative consumption practice may change. First, participants may start to link doings and sayings in new ways (e.g. by new understandings, by aspiring new ends or by bringing different emotions to the stage) and second, other

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practices may influence the organization of a collaborative consumption practice (e.g. by imposing new rules or manipulating practices and arrangements that are essential to the collaborative consumption practice). In this respect, we have argued, the organizations that constitute and operate the platforms which facilitate collaborative consumption practices make a particularly relevant set of practices and arrangements.

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One reason to speak of 'trajectories' is that the development of (sets of) social practices can have an aimed for or partly unplanned – but still recognizable – direction. In a way that closely resembles the approach suggested by transition theorists (Geels, 2011; Geels and Schot, 2010) practice theorists seek to map and explain dynamics of social change that are attached to specific sets of social practices. This focus on trajectories of change is relevant when it comes to understanding the dynamics of change in collaborative consumption. The present trajectory of collaborative consumption shows a set of social practices that move along the edge of 'the market' and 'civil society' by merging understandings, teleoaffective structures and rules from both spheres. One question is whether these practices, when they spread and become popular, will increasingly organize themselves according to a conventional market rationality, thereby potentially undermining the promises they have shown as a pathway towards environmental and social sustainability.

1.5. 3. Methods

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Methodologically, we have limited our study to two relevant sets of practices and arrangements. First, the collaborative consumption practices themselves (i.e. the Peerby and the MyWheels practice) and secondly, the platforms and organizations that are fundamental to these collaborative consumption practices (i.e. the MyWheels and Peerby companies and platforms).

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Our study of the Peerby practice is informed by six interviews with participants, one interview with the head of product of Peerby, online research on the platform and the company, and first-person participations in the practice by one of the researchers. Our study of the MyWheels practice is informed by eight interviews with participants, one interview with the chief operational officer of MyWheels, and online research on the platform and the company. We did not research the latter case by first-person participations, as the investigator was not in possession of a driving license, which is a requirement to participate in the practice. Participants from the practices were recruited first via the contact functionalities of the platforms and later by snowball sampling. The interviews and first-person participations were executed between July and October 2015. All interviewed participants resided within 10 km from the city centre of Wageningen, the Netherlands.

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This study does not intend to realize a representative picture of all the participants and their performances of the practices. We used interviews and observations as methodological tools to inform our reflections on the confrontation of theory with empirics. Further studies would benefit from a larger sample and from attention to international comparison, differences in rural and urban settings, as well as to properties of participants such as income levels, age, gender, and employment status.

1.6. 4. Case studies

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In this section, we will describe and analyse the cases of lending and borrowing using the Peerby platform and car sharing via the MyWheels platform. Both case studies follow the theoretically derived format of performances, embeddedness, and trajectories and take the potential futures of collaborative consumption as their central theme.

1.6.1. 4.1. The dynamics of change in Peerby practices

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Launched in 2011 by a Dutch start-up, Peerby is an online platform, which facilitates borrowing among 'neighbours' (people residing maximally 15 km from one another). Things that are borrowed via the platform generally include DIY tools and household items. In several years, the Peerby platform acquired a userbase of over 200,000 members and more than 100,000 items have been requested (Peerby, 2017, 2016a). Most members reside in The Netherlands, but the platform is also available in a number of cities across Europe and the United States (Luimstra, 2017).

1.6.1.1. 4.1.1. The performance of lending and borrowing via Peerby

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All performances of the Peerby-practice involve a similar set of doings and sayings. First, to borrow via Peerby, a borrower should place a textual request on the Peerby website or app. This request is distributed among a group of nearby living members who can instantly indicate whether they have the item available. If so, the borrower is notified of a match on her or his cell phone and a chat screen pops up where both can discuss how to proceed. The borrower then usually travels to the lender, obtains the item, and returns it after use, typically some days later. Each performance of the practice follows roughly this organization.

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To some extent, the organization of the practice is guided by explicit rules, which are installed and enforced by the Peerby organization. Participants, for example, are not allowed to advertise their goods, to place sexual requests, or to request for people, money, and apartments. However, besides these, there is a rather striking absence of other rules. In Peerby's words, the one and only rule is that "Peerby is for borrowing and lending stuff!" (Peerby, n.d.). There are, for instance, no rules on how long items can be borrowed and about what to do when somebody stole or broke your belongings – except that Peerby is not liable for any damages (Peerby, n.d.).

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The teleoaffective structure of the practice involves a dynamic between borrowers and lenders. First, borrowers work towards the end of obtaining the item and it makes sense for them to participate in the practice partially because of its teleological relation with the practice in which they hope to use the item (i.e. you borrow a drill because you want to hang a painting). Lenders, on the other hand, work towards the end of fulfilling requests. Secondly, the teleologies in the practice cannot be separated from the affectivities at play. As one interviewee said:

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"It's really about helping each other; that someone else trusts you and lends you their belongings." (personal communication, July 8, 2015).

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Emotions of trust, generosity and helpfulness are at the heart of a dynamic interaction ritual between borrower and lender, which are particularly felt at the moments when both meet in person. Borrowers tell that they are astonished when they participate in the practice for the first time and see that 'it works'. Depending on the item you request (i.e. it should not be too expensive, fragile, or privacy sensitive), it is not uncommon to get several positive responses quickly, within half an hour after uploading your request. Moreover, when borrower and lender meet, things often proceed very friendly and generous. This can give participants a strong feeling that other participants stand ready to help them.

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Remarkably, there is normally no direct reciprocity in the practice. Paying is against the Peerby company's rules and only incidentally do borrowers turn up with a small gift (some chocolate or a bottle of wine) after lending a precious item. Some lenders appreciate this, but others find it in conflict with the rationale

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underlying the practice (i.e. it's about borrowing, not renting). The absence of financial transactions contributes to the generosity and trust that are felt in the practice. However, as one interviewee remarks, this can make you feel terrible when things go wrong:

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"Once, we borrowed something that broke down as soon as we put the plug into the power socket. That's just horrible. You borrow a thing and try to treat it properly. And yeah, you think you've done nothing wrong – it's the machine, it's not me. But it's better to break something you own. (...) With really valuable items, I'd rather go to a tool station where you pay a deposit and know that it's okay when things go wrong." (personal communication, July 10, 2015).

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This quote shows that the absence of rules (e.g. in the form of insurances, deposits and guarantees) in the Peerby practice, raises the stakes for borrowers to act responsibly. Giving trust, acting trustworthy, and showing gratitude only become central elements of each performance in the collective understanding that it is very easy to make abuse of a lender's generosity – especially because borrowers and lenders are almost always strangers to one another. It is, for example, particularly uncommon for lenders to know where a borrower resides and finding this out would require them to ask, which could be taken as a sign of a wariness and distrust. Unlike borrowing from 'real neighbours' who live in the same street, borrowers and lenders in the Peerby practice have a one-off exchange and they are aware that chances they would meet again are very small. It is against the background of this form of anonymity, the absence of rules, and the lurking risk of abuse, that lending and borrowing via Peerby feels friendly, generous, helpful, and fun. Despite all possible concerns, participants put faith in each other and experience that this works out positively (abuse is very uncommon). This fosters a flow of emotional energy.

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Besides rules and teleoaffectivities, there is a range of understandings that guide the practice. First, there are skills and practical understandings (e.g. pertaining to using the platforms, apps, smartphones, communicating online, etc.), which are essential to make the practice intelligible for participants. Secondly, a range of general understandings give perspective to what it means to share via the platform and show why the practice is precious to its participants. Many of our interviewees understand the practice to be an antidote to a progressively individualist consumer society, in which people consume inefficiently. One interviewee phrased it as follows:

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"Everybody is so extremely individualistic nowadays. [Peerby] goes against that, I think. (...) We start to learn to share again, to be in touch with one another. Mostly with people who live nearby. (...) And why not? Why would you try to do everything by yourself? Why would you buy, if you can borrow from somebody across the street? And on top of that, it makes the other show you their human face, as it were." (personal communication, 10 July 2015).

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Even though this understanding may not be equally shared among all participants, it shows that a dissatisfaction with the 'individualized' character of today's market economy supports the practice. Reflecting on the early writings on collaborative consumption (cf. Botsman and Rogers, 2011), it is important to note that this understanding identifies 'lack of community' as the fundamental problem of consumption while 'underutilization' is but one of the outcomes.

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Taking together the rules, understandings and teleoaffective structure that guide the Peerby practice, we see that it constitutes a

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certain sense of 'neighbourliness', which however is different from its traditional sense. Participants understand themselves to be part of a community of people who put faith in one another and see that this works out: they experience that people do act responsibly and can be trusted. Without a major backup of rules (e.g. deposits, insurances and guarantees), the interactions between unacquainted participants trigger relatively strong feelings of trust, generosity, and gratitude. These emotional energies make it attractive to return to the practice and also give participants the normative feeling that they should share back and return something to the practice and its (imaginative) community. This suggests that when the organization of the practice changes and undermines the special type of trust that emerged between borrowers and lenders, this may significantly affect the attractiveness of the practice to current participants. Asking one of our respondents what would make her quit the practice, her answer is clear:

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"When the spontaneity of 'someone sending a request and you replying to it' will be lost. If there gets anyone in between [borrowers and lenders], that would be a reason for me to quit. (...) The spontaneous side of it vanishes and so does the trust that people have in each other; that will be lost in case of a man in the middle." (personal communication, 8 July 2015).

1.6.1.2. 4.1.2. Embeddedness of the Peerby practice

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Situated practices like the Peerby practice are not made to happen in a vacuum but in connection to a seemingly infinite number of arrangements and practices (from smart phones and garden sheds to internet providers). One group of practices and arrangements that is of special relevance here is the Peerby company, which aims to guide the trajectory of the practice to achieve its own ends.

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As a start-up company, Peerby tries to experiment with the Peerby platform and practice to achieve its aim of facilitating "instant access to everything for everyone, everywhere!" (personal communication, August 17, 2015). The company is profit driven and one of its biggest challenges is to build a profitable business-model out of a platform that relies on the charitable and free sharing of items among people. It acquired millions of funding from venture capitalists and crowd funding campaigns and as time passes, the pressure to become profitable increases (Peerby, 2016b, 2014).

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One corresponding development is the company's introduction of the new 'Peerby Go' platform (Peerby, 2015), which is advertised as a paid alternative to the conventional platform. Owners can add items to their 'my stuff' page on the Peerby Go platform and indicate at which times during the week they would be available to provide the item. An algorithm then determines at what price per day the item will come available on the platform. Renters can search the platform for items they need, contact owners, and place a request for a specific item from a specific owner. When the owner agrees, the renter must pay a fee via online banking. This fee consists of renting costs (75% of which go to the owner and 25% to the platform) and costs for delivering and returning the item (typically less than €5,-) (Peerby, 2016a). Prices range from €5,-/day for a basic drill to €40,-/day for an electric cargo bike (excluding delivery costs). All transactions are covered by an insurance and a range of terms and conditions deals with compensation procedures in case of damage or theft (Peerby, n.d.).

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In Peerby Go, the type of trust that emerged in the conventional practice, is substituted by market-based interactions and backed up by insurances. The change from a free to a paid practice involves extensive change in the organization of the practice. Doings and sayings are linked in different ways, by new rules (e.g. insurances and terms and conditions), understandings (e.g. about what is

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appropriate to ask for and what not), and teleoaffective structure (e.g. owners working towards earning money). As the intensity and type of interactions among participants changes (owners and renters do not even meet in person anymore as there is a delivery and return service), the new Peerby Go practice is unlikely to constitute a similar sense of 'neighbourliness' as the conventional one did.

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Remarkably, the displacement of the type of trust and sense of 'neighbourliness' in the conventional practice by relatively more anonymous, market-based interactions, underlines a set of general understandings of Peerby's employees, who say that Peerby must become "the Spotify of things rather than the Facebook of the neighbourhood" (personal communication, August 17, 2015). Rather than encouraging social interactions among people, they say, Peerby should in the first place encourage 'access over ownership'. This is also made clear by the power-pitch that Peerby's CEO and founder Daan Weddepohl formulated to attract funders in Silicon Valley in 2011:

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"My company, Peerby, develops an app and a website that helps urbanites between 20 and 35 years old to rent things safely and quickly from people living in their neighbourhood, with a gnome actively searching for offers and ringing their neighbours' bell." (Vanhoufte, 2016).

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The gnome could be anything that takes the 'hassle' of sharing out of people's hands. Weddepohl, for instance, sees a huge potential for drones and autonomous vehicles to distribute things among people and businesses (Luimstra, 2017). Accordingly, the launch of the Peerby Go platform is for the Peerby company a step towards its end of profiting from 'solving underutilization' by making sharing as fast and safe as possible.

1.6.1.3. 4.1.3. Trajectories of Peerby social practices

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The present trajectory of the Peerby social practices finds itself at a crossroad. What started as a helpful and friendly practice of people lending tools and household items for free via an online platform is now confronted with the emergence of the adjacent Peerby Go-platform that no longer does the borrowing and lending for free. By changing the platform and the rules that govern the practice, the Peerby company causes a split in the practice: from the original Peerby-practice germinates a new Peerby Go-practice which takes typical elements from the original practice but is organized in a radically different way. Even though it is likely that both platforms will co-exist in the near future, this has important implications for the trajectories Peerby practices may follow.

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Ultimately, the conventional Peerby practice and the launch of the new platform show a difference and to some extent a conflict between the general understandings and teleoaffectivities of participants (shaped by the organization of the practice) and the actions of the company. Underpinning the conventional Peerby practice is the 'social promise' of collaborative consumption as a stimulant to social interactions among people. The relative absence of rules and the presence of an affective structure of trust and generosity tie together with the understanding that 'a lack of community' is a fundamental flaw in today's economy. This gives rise to a new form of 'neighbourliness', mixing online and offline elements. Appreciating and valuing this effect of the practice, participants even expect to quit when it is undermined. On the other hand, the example of the new Peerby Go practice clearly highlights that a different principle of collaborative consumption underpins the understandings, desires, and ambitions of the Peerby company. This is the idea of 'increasing utilization' in a way that combines collaborative consumption's contentious promise of reduced

§3

environmental impacts (because less products need to be produced) with the economic promise of lower costs for participants (i.e. no need to buy when you can rent) and profit for the company (e.g. a fee for each transaction).

§4

Different trajectories of the Peerby practice are possible and the understandings and ambitions of the Peerby company will be crucial for the direction it takes. Extrapolating the direction Peerby took with the launch of Peerby Go, for instance, suggests a potential practice in which the new emerged social dimension of the conventional practice is undermined by an increasing role of technologies. In a 'tecthopia' of drones and autonomous vehicles distributing things among people, the potential Peerby practice may become performed by different people, involve new types of items and become differently embedded in participants' everyday lives. However, it risks cancelling-out the new sense of 'neighbourliness' that is at the heart of the success of the conventional Peerby practice, and first-day participants may avoid the future practice, because it lacks the friendly and helpful interactions they grew fond of. Consequently, the attempt of the Peerby company to mainstream the practice and make it profitable, changes its performance and embeddedness. The conventional Peerby practice, which people perform as the social antidote to a detached and calculative market economy, is re-embedded in such a way that it is attached to profit making, standardized commodities, managed risks, and impersonal relations, thereby changing its character and its attractiveness to current participants.

1.6.2. 4.2. The dynamics of change in MyWheels practices

§1

The non-profit company MyWheels was founded in 2011, but has a much longer history, tracing back to a car sharing club in the early 1990's. With 30,000 members in 2016, MyWheels is the third largest car sharing platform of the Netherlands (KpVV, 2017; MyWheels, n.d.). The fleet of MyWheels-cars breaks down into two groups: around 800 cars are shared by private car-owners and around 200 cars are provided by car dealers. The latter cars are only used via the platform. They have dedicated parking lots in neighbourhoods and are equipped with a 'smart' board computer, to which they owe the name 'smartwheels'. In contrast to private cars, smartwheels can be accessed with a smartphone or smartcard and are instantly booked without human interference. Originally, the car sharing practice only comprised of renting smartwheels (i.e. business-to-peer), but in 2011 the company added the option to rent private cars (i.e. peer-to-peer) via the platform. Car sharing via MyWheels involves payments: renters pay for subscription and car usage, whereas car owners use the platform for free. The platform keeps €2,50/day from each exchange.

1.6.2.1. 4.2.1. The performance of car sharing via MyWheels

§1

Car sharing via MyWheels involves an organized set of doings and sayings. A renter searches for a car at the MyWheels website or app and then either makes a booking for the car or sends a message to its owner. The owner gets notified and can respond to the renter and accept or decline his or her eventual booking. In the case of a smartwheels, this proceeds automatically, that is without human interference. The renter usually travels to the owner to pick up the car and returns it after use. After return, the owner must check the mileage and enter the data on the website, after which the final bill is sent to the renter and MyWheels transfers the rent to the owner. Each performance of the practice roughly follows this organization.

§2

In contrast to the conventional Peerby practice, car sharing via MyWheels is guided by an extensive set of rules, many of which are enforced by the MyWheels company. For instance, the company checks the identity of renters and owners, car owners are obliged to check renters' driving license, rides have their own insurance

§3

agreement, renters and owners are required to agree about any existing damage to the car, and there are procedures to deal with damage from accidents.

§4

The presence of MyWheels as a mediating party and the platform with its rules, insurances, and traceability, makes it easier for car owners and renters to trust each other and gives them a sense of certainty that things will be arranged properly – also when a car gets damaged. One of our interviewees (a renter) phrased it as follows:

§5

"It's just, things are well-organized this way. That's it. And that's what I want: A bit of convenience and just being sure that things are properly arranged, from both sides. That's important to me. You could of course go and borrow a neighbour's car (...) and then you'd go and fill the tank an extra time. That's such a hassle, I don't want to have anything to do with that." (personal communication, October 3, 2015).

§6

Akin to the Peerby practice, feelings of trust are crucial to make the practice 'work'. However, here formal rules and insurances of the MyWheels company as a professional intermediary, do not undermine but function as a precondition to the form of trust that emerges between renters and owners. The trust relation between car owner and renter, moreover, is different from that between the lenders and borrowers in Peerby. Here, renters do not understand owners' sharing of their cars as a generous favour, but as a fair transaction they pay for.

§7

The teleoaffective structure of the practice comprises of renters working towards driving a car to go somewhere and get back home. The MyWheels practice is like the Peerby practice teleologically related to other practices, visiting friends or family for example. One of the tasks for renters is to choose a car: either a smartwheels car or a private car. Most smartwheels and private cars are similarly priced. You typically pay €20–30 a day plus a compensation per kilometre (e.g. €0,12/km) and a fee for fuel per kilometre (e.g. €0,14/km). Car owners determine the height of these fees, but they usually follow the automatic suggestions of the platform. As most cars are similarly priced, price does not play a dominant role in choosing cars. Instead, renters often hire a car that is located nearby and which they are familiar with. This can either be a smartwheels or a car from an owner living across the street and whom they got to know when renting his or her car before.

§8

Establishing standard options can be important because it can be a hassle to organize a private car last minute. When renting a private car, renters know they should start searching at least several days, but preferably more than a week in advance and feelings of stress can sometimes get rather intense when they need a private car for a certain date but have not received any response from the owner. One issue for renters here is one of MyWheels's rules, which obliges them to pay a large part of the rent after their booking-request has been accepted. Consequently, placing multiple requests, could end up being costly. This makes renting private cars rather inflexible and when you need a car last minute, it is much more attractive to go for the instantly bookable smartwheels.

§9

Participants in the practice understand smartwheels and private cars to be two distinct categories, each with their own distribution of appropriate actions. Understandings thus inform the teleo-affective structure of the practice. For example, renters feel that they could pick up and return a smartwheels late at night, whereas they feel uncomfortable doing the same with a private car, because this may trouble the owner. Similarly, they may feel hesitant to phone or visit a car owner who has not yet replied to the booking-request, because they do not want to act intrusively. This highlights that private cars are not 'shared' to the same extent as

§10

smartwheels are. At the same time, this makes the practice more accessible to car owners: for the largest part of time, their cars are not 'shared cars' but remain similarly embedded in their everyday lives. It is only in the case of a request that they can choose to make their car 'shared' for a specific period. For the time left, they can drive their car whenever and wherever they want – a flexibility that renters largely live without. When renting a private car, you can only go with a car when someone else gave you their permission and you must plan and make sure to be back in time (i.e. you can never stay longer when you are having fun). Regarding smartwheels, there is a bit more flexibility in changing return times during a renting period, but it could still happen that someone else booked the car right after you while you are stuck in a traffic jam.

§11

Car sharing is part of participants' way of handling their overall transport needs and is tied up with using other forms or mobility. MyWheels participants (renters as well as owners) make little use of cars and their car sharing is often guided by the understanding that car-intensive lifestyles have disastrous environmental impacts. To limit overall car use, they switch between more sustainable transport modalities including bikes and public transport. Because of the efforts involved in renting a car, the practice is particularly attractive to those people who live low car-intensive lifestyles, whereas it is far less attractive to car-commuters and others who use cars daily.

§12

The combinations of rules, understandings, and teleo-affective structure of the car sharing practice, result in a practice where participants are committed to fast and efficient car sharing rather than energized by the social interactions that may take place. When renters pick up a car, they generally want things to proceed swiftly as they need the car to get somewhere in time. As one interviewee remembers from before the introduction of private cars to the platform in 2011:

§13

"When everything started, it was just cars that were managed by somebody, but you'd never get in contact with that person. You would just obtain the key from a locker or open the car with a smartcard, so there was no personal contact at all (...) and yes, we don't see it as something positive when you really need to talk to someone." (personal communication, October 2, 2015).

§14

It is interesting in this respect that the company of MyWheels tries to stimulate the social aspects of peer-to-peer car sharing by 'community building' through organizing local events and meet-ups. Most of our interviewees see this as a waste of effort and do not see the point of taking part in a physical community for every (online) service they use.

1.6.2.2. 4.2.2. Embeddedness of the MyWheels practice

§1

Just like the Peerby practice, car sharing via MyWheels is embedded among many other practices and arrangements. Amidst them, the non-profit MyWheels comprises a special set of practices and arrangements, which aims to facilitate car sharing as a sustainable and social practice:

§2

"Our ambition is stimulating people to make a conscious choice about each trip they make. (...) The car is not always the best option. As a car-rental organization, that's obviously a strange thing to say. (...) [But] it's a combination: sometimes you need to get to a place where the train doesn't take you easily and then it's useful to be able to take a car." (personal communication, October 21, 2015).

§3

In contrast to the Peerby company, MyWheels has no intend to

§4

try to radically change the practice or to develop a new platform to create a profitable business-model. Instead, the non-profit currently operates a sustainable business model and suggests that the biggest change in the practice was several years back, in 2011, when private cars were added to the platform. MyWheels is not profit-driven, does not aim to attract venture capital, and depends for a major part on (partly paid) voluntary work by members who for example run a helpline and organize local meetups (MyWheels, 2014). The company pays significant attention to 'community building' and tries to form a movement of people who are consciously trying to reduce their car-use. Clearly, MyWheels originates from a car sharing club and aims for more than just providing the service of a car sharing platform.

§5

Besides the community aspect, the day to day practices of MyWheels employees focus on maintaining the platform, investigating the best points to position smartwheels, and implementing new technologies (e.g. technology for unlocking cars with smartphones). By comparison with the Peerby company and platform, MyWheels has more competitors in the Netherlands. Each with their own platforms, forms of car sharing (e.g. peer-to-peer or business-to-peer), and rules guiding the practices (cf. KpV, 2017). For instance, a relatively minor change as cancelling the rule that discourages renters to place multiple booking-requests at the same time, may already have an impact on the attractiveness of car sharing via MyWheels versus its competitors. At the same time, all these car sharing organizations deal with the emergence of innovative technologies such as e-cars, driverless cars, and technologies from the Internet of Things. How MyWheels responds to these developments will impact upon the car sharing practice and its relation to its participants.

1.6.2.3. 4.2.3. Trajectories of MyWheels social practices

§1

The present trajectory of the MyWheels practice shows a more unified direction than the crossroad that the Peerby practice finds itself at. The car sharing practice can be understood as originating from a business-to-peer car sharing practice that developed into a merged practice of business-to-peer (smartwheels) and peer-to-peer (private cars) car sharing.

§2

By developing the car sharing platform, MyWheels made it easier for people to share cars among strangers as it enables new forms of trust that were absent in earlier forms of offline car sharing. At the same time, the burden this form of car sharing poses on the time-space organization of people's everyday life, make it challenging for the practice to become mainstream. The practice remains unattractive to vast amounts of people who use cars on a daily basis. Following a trajectory of implementing new technologies seems promising for the MyWheels company to lower these burdens: smart technologies and innovations from the Internet of Things may disrupt and revolutionize car sharing practices. The 'techtopia' of driverless cars that can be booked and opened with smartphones, and autonomously drive people from A to B, seems at our fingertips, technologically at least.

§3

Such a revolutionary trajectory, however, is at odds with the present-day organization of the practice which relies, for an important part, on the private ownership of cars. Would private car owners be willing to equip their cars with smart technologies that enable instant access by other MyWheels-members? The current practice does not require many changes in the embeddedness of the car in owners' everyday life, but when their cars really become 'shared cars' that are commonly used by others, this would affect their car-use as well.

§4

A remarkable contrast with Peerby in this respect is that the participants of the MyWheels-practice support the idea of reducing the social interactions in the practice, whereas this is crucial to the sense of 'neighbourliness' in the Peerby practice. Some participants

§5

even find the MyWheels company too much focused on the aspect of community building, whereas they (renters in particular) just want a convenient and well-organized service of renting a car next door. The presence of many rules and a teleoaffective structure focused on flexible car use, tie together with the understanding that car sharing needs to be swift and convenient rather than social. This suggests that guiding the trajectory of the MyWheels practice is the principle of increasing efficiency by applying new and smart technologies.

1.7. 5. Conclusions

§1

The phenomenon of collaborative consumption indicates the emergence and rapid spread of a new set of consumption practices that seem to combine elements of 'civil society' and 'the market'. Originally praised as an antidote to a detached and unsustainable market economy, there is a growing concern that collaborative consumption will develop into a 'big business model' and undermine its initial social and 'civil society' dimensions. This article has shed light on the potential futures of collaborative consumption by employing a practice theoretical perspective.

§2

Our use of practice theories in the study of collaborative consumption foregrounds the dynamics between the agency of participants, on the one hand, and the power of collaborative consumption organizations (or companies), on the other. Both are crucial factors in determining the trajectories of collaborative consumption practices. Our study shows that participants engage with collaborative consumption practices in a purposive (or goal-oriented) and affective (or emotional) way. Moreover, it highlights that a collaborative consumption practice is contingent on its practitioners. Participants can at any time choose to divert from the organization of the practice, or even leave it altogether. We have seen that companies can make a significant impact on the organization of collaborative consumption practices and thereby indirectly affect whether and how the practice will keep its attractiveness to participants. This practice theoretical perspective on the future of collaborative consumption sheds light on the relationship between collaborative consumption companies, practices, and participants. This relationship proves to be decisive for how the phenomenon of collaborative consumption develops and requires further attention in future studies.

§3

The cases of Peerby and MyWheels question how 'collaborative' collaborative consumption is, and will be. Our study of Peerby shows that participants seek a type of collaborative consumption that lets them share possessions with others, creating a sense of 'neighbourliness'. The introduction of Peerby Go, however, shows that the company works towards a different type of collaborative consumption: the shared use of things, rather than people sharing things. This form of collaborative consumption can ultimately lack any form of social interaction between participants, may be highly profit-driven, and highlights the promise of new technologies (such as drones, autonomous vehicles, and technologies from the Internet of Things) to radically increase shared use. This suggests a potential division in collaborative consumption practices. Some practices may be directed towards connecting people through sharing things, whereas others focus on making sharing things efficient and profitable. As our two case studies show, influenced by the understandings, ambitions, and actions of companies, the latter may become the dominant mode of collaborative consumption. The former mode is at risk of displacement, even though this form of collaborative consumption was at the root of its initial success.

§4

Remarkably, the case of MyWheels is almost opposite to the Peerby case. Participants look for a more efficient form of car sharing, which does not require renters and owners to be physically present. The company, on the other hand, puts effort in making car sharing more 'social' by trying to build a community of car sharers.

§5

The difference between the MyWheels and the Peerby cases suggests that the type of collaborative consumption people feel attracted to is not based on personal attitudes, but on the organization of collaborative consumption practices, the types of items that are shared, and how participants are able to embed the practice in their everyday life. For example, car sharing as a (supposedly) environmentally friendly practice may become stressful and uncertain when it is not guided by rules, insurances, and technologies that make it fast and reliable. Similar rules may, however, undermine the sense of 'neighbourliness' that people experience when borrowing a drill from a relative stranger. This also suggests that the teleoaffordivities that guide the practices in which shared items are used determine the importance of social interactions involved in the collaborative consumption practice. To the practice of car using (MyWheels), immediate access to a car is highly relevant, as this practice tends to be strongly ad hoc, whereas this sense of immediacy is less present in DIY practices (borrowing a drill via Peerby). You want to get into a car as soon as possible for a quick errand, but drilling a hole can wait another day and thus provides participants with a much better opportunity to chat. This indicates the potential of a transition towards not a singular 'sharing economy', but a multiplicity of complementary (collaborative) consumption practices that are organized according to different principles (e.g. borrowing, renting, and buying) and combine 'market' and 'civil society' elements in case-specific ways.

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