The impact of sharing economy on transaction costs: The comparative case of Uber’s platform and traditional taxis

• Autor(a) principal: Martins, Patrícia Meiginhos Marçal
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/29604
• topic: Economia partilhada - Sharing economy; Custos de transação -- Transaction costs; Consumidor -- Consumer; Uber; Taxis; Táxis

Although we can say that sharing has existed for as long as mankind, the sharing economy itself has arisen with the development of digital platforms and technological improvements that facilitate sharing behavior. Underlying the premise that people want to use things and not really own them, the sharing economy helps this vision become a reality with a great impact on the reduction of transaction costs. Understanding the relationship between the sharing economy and transaction costs is the main purpose of this research which has studied the Portuguese population’s perception of transaction costs in the sharing economy (Uber) and the traditional market (taxis) with the elaboration of a questionnaire. The statistical analysis of the obtained answers shows that the consumer perceives to have lower transaction costs when choosing the sharing economy over the traditional market, in other words, when choosing Uber over taxis. On top of that, with the development of an econometric model, it was possible to conclude that the perception of transaction costs influences the preference between the sharing economy and the traditional market: the consumer will choose the option that allows him to have lower perceived transaction costs. Whether it is the decrease in waiting time, the convenience of ordering a car from anywhere, or the decrease in the effort spent on tracking the service, the Uber sharing economy platform presents better features than taxis traditional model, making transaction costs decrease and being more appealing to the consumer.