Risks and Liabilities in Sharing Economy Interactions: Does Data Help or Harm?

Sharing economy platforms utilize technology to facilitate transactions between consumers and providers. They attempt to limit the risk inherent to commercial transactions between unknown peers by harnessing the data collected on each party. However, the novelty of the sharing economy may introduce risks and liability uncertainties to participants. Our research contributes to this nascent literature in two ways. First, we developed a framework to categorize and differentiate sharing economy transactions. Second, we performed expert interviews with stakeholders representing platforms, law, liability, and policy in order to examine the opportunities and pitfalls of data used to allocate risk and liability in this market. We find that while there is potential to use platform data to reduce risk, it may also create concerns about privacy and undesirable discrimination. Finally, we identified the needs for future research to improve our understand regarding the potential for platform data to improve risks and liability decisions-making in the sharing economy.