CRII: CHS: Sharing Over Direct and Extended Social Networks - Towards A Trustworthy and Efficient Sharing Economy

The sharing economy is large and expanding, as demonstrated by the rapid ascent of services such as Uber and AirBnB. One significant impediment to the growth of the sharing economy is trust. This investigation will contribute to social computing research by exploring the possibility of building a trustworthy and efficient sharing economy system that facilitates posting requests and sharing resources within people's existing direct and extended social networks. The advantage of a social-network-based sharing economy system is that social networks produce trust between participants without relying on third-party institutions or reputation systems; trust is built based on the personal and interpersonal characteristics of the sharing economy participants. The key challenge of a successful social-network-based sharing economy system is to design the payment structures and system infrastructures to efficiently mobilize the direct and extended social network.

This investigation focuses on the following three questions: How to leverage social network structural and contextual information to produce trust between participants in sharing economy systems? Which payment structures encourage friends and friends of friends to respond to requests while also maintaining long-term relationships? 3) Which routing mechanisms are able to quickly match requests with resources without overloading people's social network? This investigation will lead to four research outcomes: (1) Advance theoretical understanding of trust production mechanisms in a sharing economy. (2) Gain empirical knowledge about people's perception and practices regarding different types of payment (e.g., cash, gifts, and IOUs)in a social-network- based sharing economy. (3) Gain empirical knowledge about people's perceptions and practices around routing their requests across their direct and extended social networks. (4) Develop a research platform that embodies the findings of the investigations.