Purdue HTM faculty member earns Best Competitive Paper Award at the world’s top consumer research conference

Kevin So

Written by: Tim Brouk, tbrouk@purdue.edu

The sharing economy is defined as the network of businesses that provide goods and services to be utilized as shared resources instead of individual ownership. From the Airbnb properties in which you stayed during homecoming, to the Veo scooters and bikes zipping around the Purdue University campus, to the Uber you rode in after a Boilermaker basketball game, examples of the sharing economy are everywhere.

All the sharing has brought in big bucks for these companies. A recent report found the sharing economy valued at more than $366 billion in 2024. Three companies — Airbnb, Lyft and the aforementioned Uber — make up almost $300 billion of that sum alone. That same report predicts the sharing economy in the United States to balloon to $1.4 trillion by 2030.

This growth — both recent and predicted — has caught the attention of many consumer behavior researchers such as Kevin So, C.B. Smith Endowed Professor in Purdue’s White Lodging-J.W. Marriott, Jr. School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. Much of his recent work has examined trends within this tremendous sharing economy growth.

His latest publication, “Beyond Money: How Social Motives Drive Green Purchases in the Sharing Economy,” looks at sustainability issues within the sharing economy. He and his co-authors — former colleagues at Oklahoma State University Yuechen Wu and Xiang Fang — combed through years of data from multiple sources, focusing on Airbnb, Lyft and Uber, and found the service providers motivated by social benefits (rather than money) are more likely to engage in green consumption, both on and off sharing platforms. However, their social motivations do not affect regular product purchases. From a marketing point of view, the use of sustainable practices — and the marketing of such — appeals to consumers more than service providers that don’t tout or even engage in sustainable, environmentally-friendly “green” practices.

This multiple-study and multiple methods collaborative work conducted in the past four years made a splash at the 2025 Association for Consumer Research Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., a conference with nearly 1,300 attendees, by winning the Best Competitive Paper Award out of almost 1,100 submissions, as judges and many other consumer behavior experts shared So and his colleagues’ interest in the under-researched sustainable consumption behaviors of the service providers in the sharing economy. The paper has just been published in the Journal of Service Research, the internationally recognized premier journal in services marketing.

So said there is a psychological aspect to this project.  “Social motivation” and how service providers are motivated to engage in the sharing economy — whether monetary or social — influences their feelings of pride, which leads to green consumption behaviors, both within and outside of sharing platforms.

“We know that there could be a social desirability bias. When you ask people, ‘Are you engaging in green consumption?’ Many people say yes because it’s more socially desirable,” So explained.

‘Sense of pride’

Using a combination of datasets made available by Uber, Lyft and Airbnb as well as numerous self-reported data reports from drivers and hosts, So and his collaborators found hosts of an Airbnb short-term rental or an Uber driver who demonstrates a “sense of pride” in their work often practice in efforts of sustainability — offering recycling in the Airbnb or driving a hybrid or electric vehicle for Uber, for examples.

“When they have this sense of pride, they are more likely to engage in green consumption,” So explained. “It’s not just about money. It’s also about social interactions they can get through all these encounters that they have with other people. And by doing so, if we emphasize that, they are more likely to enhance their feelings of pride and therefore subsequently they engage in more sustainable consumption.”

Quantifying this qualitative behavior was daunting, but So and his team found using the combination of available large-scale secondary datasets with self-reported data from Airbnb hosts and drivers for Lyft and Uber could back their hypothesis of sustainability within the sharing economy.

“We specifically asked people to tell us their practices in their operations: What sustainable practices did they engage in? We have a long list of items, developed based on the information from Airbnb, for them to tell us. For example, do hosts use devices for energy conservation? Do they use recycling? Do they purchase certain types of products, such as recycled paper products, reusable food storage containers, etc.? For consumption outside the platform, we gathered data on how often they chose organic/green options in categories such as bath products, detergent, vegetables, etc.  So, it is a complete list for us to get people’s behavioral data,” So said.

So also mentioned sustainability is a huge part of Airbnb’s DNA. The company urges its hosts to pursue such a mindset when offering their property to short-term renters.

“They encourage Airbnb hosts to engage in more sustainable practices, and therefore, from the company’s perspective, that’s critically important to their mission,” he added.

‘Social investment’

How has that emphasis on sustainability helped the company reach almost $80 billion in worth on NASDAQ during the week of Oct. 25? It does so by attracting more eco-conscious travelers.

“If people are motivated by social motivation, then can we do something to emphasize their social motivations and perhaps celebrate their social motivations?” So queried. “There are different reasons why people want to rent out their property to other people. It’s not just about money; it’s also about the social interactions they can get through all these encounters with other people. And by doing so, if we emphasize that, they are more likely to enhance their feelings of pride, and therefore, subsequently, they engage in more sustainable consumption.”

Sharing is the future

Marriott Hotels recently launched its own short-term rental platform:  Homes & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy. At the same time, Airbnb is expected to start building its own hotels soon. As such, the sharing economy is dipping into traditional hospitality and vice versa, a phenomenon that So and colleagues described as “two-directional convergence of platform and pipeline business models” in their 2020 Journal of Service Management article.

“The whole ecosystem of the sharing economy is evolving and it’s changing rapidly,” he added. The (sharing) platforms are entering the incumbent space. The incumbent is entering the platform space. It’s what we call ‘convergent.’

“Hotels and Airbnb are basically competing for similar customers. Individual hosts compete with each other but can also cooperate, such as forming a short-term vacation rental association at the destination level to advocate for their collective interests and lobby for regulations that benefit them. In that case, they are working together.”