Sharing economy is a new economic model based on technology to improve the utilization efficiency of idle resources. It is characterized by platform, high efficiency, openness and distribution. It has become an important measure to activate the stock, improve efficiency and enhance service by integrating multiple elements and resource allocation mechanism.

Based on the separation of ownership and right to use, sharing economy uses information delocalization and new credit mechanism to achieve the integration of demand, supply and matching mechanisms, reduce transaction costs, and achieve long tail effect and scale effect. Sharing economy basically covers the main life scenarios, with commodity redistribution, tangible product services, collaborative sharing of non tangible resources and open collaborative sharing as the main business model. There is a complex legal relationship structure in the sharing economy, which challenges the suitability of the existing system. At the same time, there are some problems such as principal-agent, new monopoly and information security. In the future, the sharing economy will present the trend of service technology, technology intelligence and service scenario. The sharing economy needs to focus on the separation of ownership and use right, the stability of connection mechanism and the relationship with regulatory framework. The government should actively encourage the development of sharing economy, adhere to the principle of inclusive supervision, and build an active and long-term regulatory mechanism.

Modern information, mobile Internet, big data and other emerging technologies and applications are influencing the development concept, business model, organizational structure and risk management and control mode of the consumption system with their unique technical support, business model and value creation mode, gradually becoming the force that can not be ignored in the whole consumption ecosystem, and will guide the trend of service technology. With the rapid development of emerging technology, the third-party payment has become an important infrastructure of the financial system. The payment settlement and its related account system have developed rapidly. The third-party payment, especially the mobile payment, has a profound impact on the national consumption mode. The consumption online, online and offline integration and sharing economy have become forces that cannot be ignored in the consumption system.

The mode of economic resource allocation aiming at sharing or sharing is becoming more and more popular, becoming an important representative of emerging economic formats at home and abroad, and gradually forming a sharing economic ecosystem. The open, inclusive and efficient technological disposition makes the sharing economy transcend the time and space constraints of traditional product supply and service supply, and makes serving long tail customers become a service mode of marginal increase of benefit or marginal decrease of cost. Similar to Internet finance, China's sharing economy is developing rapidly, which has become an important business form in the field of consumption. It has an increasingly far-reaching impact on traditional products and service models, and gradually expands its influence in the value chain.

Theoretical and practical significance of research

The internal concept of "sharing" and efficient use of resources involved in the sharing economy has existed for a long time, which is one of the important logics of resource allocation and economic sustainable development, and also an important mechanism of social welfare promotion. However, the research on the sharing economy has not become a hot topic or systematic research in the past long time. At the beginning of the 21st century, with the prevalence of Internet technology, the logic based on peer production gradually evolved the business form of sharing economy, and began to form the concept of sharing economy.

Whether it's the study of the theoretical evolution and internal logic of the sharing economy, or the study of the business model, operation mechanism, risk management and future development of the sharing economy, it's only prevalent in recent years. From a theoretical point of view, it has become a very hot topic to answer why the sharing economy has become in a short period of time, what are the internal driving factors, what are the differences with the traditional business model, and how the relevant operation mechanism is carried out. For example, how to solve the problem of information symmetry and trust mechanism matching in peer-to-peer production process, how to release the internal constraints of resource sharing through the application of technology such as data opening and big data, and how to realize the sustainability of cost-benefit of resource sharing have become the focus of research. With the rise of Internet finance, bike sharing and joint office, the research on the internal theoretical support of sharing economy has become an important research content in domestic academic circles. How to clarify the essential characteristics, core elements and internal operation mechanism of sharing economy has become the focus of research.

From a practical point of view, the foreign sharing economy business model has become a key research object, sharing cars, accommodation, office and other important research content. However, there are many differences between the development of domestic sharing economy and that of foreign countries. In particular, the origin of domestic sharing economy is mainly based on the third-party payment and Internet finance. Its business model and application scenarios have inherent particularity, such as the importance of the third-party payment system. How to analyze the main business model, scenario, risk, impact on related traditional business and future development trend of domestic sharing economy has become an important research content of practical significance.

The essence of sharing economy

With the support of mobile Internet, big data, cloud computing and other technologies, sharing economy has become a fast-growing field and an important way to improve the efficiency of resource allocation, focusing on improving the utilization efficiency of idle resources and mitigating the contradiction between supply and demand. Sharing economy, characterized by platform, high efficiency, openness and distribution, integrates idle resources, effective demand, connection mechanism, information flow, business model and other elements, which has become a new paradigm to activate the stock, improve efficiency and enhance services.

 Definition of sharing economy

Sharing economy is a new paradigm based on technology to improve the utilization efficiency of idle resources. Sharing economy is a new thinking mode and resource allocation mode based on Internet technology. Through the efficient reuse of idle resources, it has replaced the traditional productivity as one of the effective solutions to the contradiction between supply and demand. In its initial development stage, it is characterized by activating the stock and sharing by everyone. There are three basic preconditions for the operation of the sharing economy: first, there are objectively available goods or services for sharing, and the utilization efficiency is systematically underestimated; second, the owner, the user and other participants of the subjective sharing object have the sharing motivation; third, there are mechanisms or institutions connecting the demander and the supplier.

Because of the huge difference between the sharing economy and the traditional consumption mode, it was once considered to bring "subversive" influence. Sharing economy is an economic model based on the behavior of sharing, exchanging, borrowing and leasing among individual consumers, through the Internet platform to realize the sharing of goods, services, data, knowledge and skills among different subjects. Its essence is to realize the separation of ownership and use right of sharing subject with the support of information technology The sharing economy will bring about "subversive" changes in production, consumption, operation and other modes.

After a period of operation of sharing economy, sharing economy has become a new paradigm of activating stock, improving efficiency and enhancing service. Share economy enlivens the stock and reduces the demand for increment. Because the cost of sharing target is lower than the cost of reproduction, it has significant saving function for resource elements. Sharing economy promotes a new economic ethics of moderate consumption, collaborative consumption, cooperation and mutual trust, which is of positive significance to curb consumerism and luxury consumption. Major technological advances, such as the Internet, have brought about dynamic changes in social knowledge structure, significant improvements in infrastructure for human interaction, substantial increase in opportunities for interaction among members of society, and competition and innovation under technological innovation have promoted the upward movement of the social yield curve and, on the whole, the improvement of social welfare. From the perspective of value creation, sharing economy is not the creation and redistribution of individual value or company value, but the expansion of the total scale of economic and social value.

 Characteristics of sharing economy

Based on the operation and experience at home and abroad, different types of sharing economy models are quite different, but they basically have four important characteristics.

One is platform. Based on modern communication and Internet technology, the sharing economy forms a new platform, on which the supplier forms a resource supply pool, the demander forms a resource demand pool, and the supplier and demander conduct resource intensive and demand matching on the platform.

Second, high efficiency. Because of the support of technology, sharing economy makes the matching between supply and demand cross the constraints of time and space, and become a process with low cost, even marginal cost decreasing and efficiency increasing significantly. Sharing economy makes use of the long tail customer's agglomeration effect and scale economy, which makes the business model matching supply and demand more efficient and cost-benefit sustainable in business.

Third, openness. The vast majority of sharing economy business models are open. From the business model, sharing economy is open to all resource owners and resource demanders, with the same entry threshold, mainly through agglomeration to achieve scale effect and supply-demand matching, that is, a bilateral matching platform. If this kind of matching is high, then it has the function of self strengthening. The development makes it able to attract more suppliers and demanders. The function of bilateral matching platform is constantly strengthened to become a factor concentration center. From the technical level, most of the interfaces of the sharing economy are also open, which can connect other relevant participants of the sharing economy. This wider openness makes the sharing economy form a self-improvement ecosystem and become a multilateral market platform.

Finally, distributed. Traditional product supply and service supply are basically a centralized or vertical mode. The process from product production to supply presents a vertical chain process, with manufacturers as the center of the chain; the supply of services is also centered on service institutions, for example, banking services basically radiate outward with banking institutions as the center of services, matching customers' diversified financial needs. However, based on modern information technology, such as blockchain, the sharing economy gradually builds a distributed database, which presents the disintermediation of traditional intermediaries and establishes a self strengthening service model. For example, when banking institutions provide services, they need credit endorsement to deal with information asymmetry and reduce default risk. However, the credit collection mechanism of shared financial institutions can be used as the pricing basis of credit spread. In the development of sharing economy, distribution has become an increasingly important development trend, and is committed to building a service system based on Distributed Technology: in the network layer, through the distributed technology and exchange protocol to form a network platform system which is interrelated and effectively classified; in the data layer, through the public general ledger, consensus algorithm and cryptography, to realize the distributed network In the application layer, through big data, cloud computing, future smart contracts and artificial intelligence, we can achieve self supply and demand matching and related registration, transaction, payment, settlement and settlement functions.

Elements of sharing economy

There are five basic elements in the operation of sharing economy.

First, idle resources. When the economy develops to a certain extent, there will be structural changes in the efficiency of resource utilization. Some resources will become idle resources, providing a "supply basis" for the development of the sharing economy. Moreover, the ownership of idle resources can be clearly defined, and the right to use and ownership can be effectively separated.

Second, real needs. The real demand may come from two types: the first type is experiential demand, which focuses on improving their own consumption "welfare" through sharing. This type is very common, but the demand is excessively scattered, which makes it difficult to form a relatively independent business model; the second type is cost demand, which focuses on reducing consumption costs through sharing rather than taking ownership of products or services, which is The mainstream demand model of sharing economy.

Third, the connection mechanism. Generally, it is realized by the intermediary platform of sharing economy, which establishes the connection matching mechanism between idle resources and real demand.

Fourth, information flow. In the operation of sharing economy, we must be able to effectively obtain the real information of suppliers and demanders. Through collection, classification, sorting and analysis, we can form an information system that supports the matching of supply and demand, and this system can be dynamically improved, forming a credit mechanism that has binding force on both sides of supply and demand.

Fifth, income. For the supplier, improving the utilization rate of idle resources can effectively improve the economic value of the sharing object, so that it can reduce the cost or increase the income while owning its ownership; for the demander, the sharing economy provides the right to use its products and services, without paying a high cost to obtain ownership that may not be necessary, or pay a high cost to pay Production cost of products and services.

In the process of allocation and integration of the five elements, idle resources are the basis of the development of the sharing economy. The sharing platform with information flow as the support and connection mechanism as the function is the carrier of the operation of the sharing economy. The matching of supply and demand is the key to the realization of the sharing economy. The win-win income mechanism provides the basic power for the development of the sharing economy. In the operation mechanism of sharing economy, the utilization cost of idle resources is always cheaper than the purchase or production of new resources, and it only takes a small amount of time to implement, mainly relying on Internet technology to achieve rapid positioning and efficient service. The essence of sharing economy is to transfer the right to use idle resources for a short time through technical means, and to enable the owners of idle resources to obtain the corresponding right to profit. Third, it makes the operation mechanism of sharing economy, especially in the connection mechanism of multilateral platforms, more transparent, and overcomes the problem of information asymmetry, especially adverse selection in the process of resource utilization, which is the core difference between emerging sharing economy and traditional production and service.

Business model and application scenario of sharing economy

Although the development time of sharing economy is relatively short, the application of sharing economy basically covers the main life scenarios. At present, there are four business models, namely commodity re circulation, improvement of utilization rate of durable assets, service exchange, productive assets, etc., as well as commodity redistribution, tangible product service sharing, collaborative sharing of non tangible resources and open cooperation Make sharing and other business models. In application scenarios, transportation, Internet finance, life services, knowledge and skills, medical sharing, housing accommodation, production services, etc. are the mainstream.

 Business model of sharing economy

The operation mode of sharing economy is closely combined with information technology, mass consumption and other fields. Its business mode is diverse, and there is no unified mode definition in the academic circle. In the relatively early research, sharing economy mainly includes leasing, lending, exchange, gift and collaborative cooperation. There are three main models:

The first is product service systems, the second is redistribution markets, and the third is collaborative lifestyles. There are also studies that the mode of sharing economy can be divided into code sharing, content sharing, life sharing and asset sharing.

The mode of sharing economy can be divided into two dimensions: market-oriented and market structure. The business network mode of sharing economy can be basically included in it, and the mode of sharing economy can be divided into four categories: Commodity re circulation, utilization improvement of durable assets, service exchange, and sharing of productive assets. The commodity re circulation is mainly due to the modern information technology, which makes the circulation restriction of the second-hand market with high transaction cost relieved. The improvement of the utilization rate of durable assets is mainly to improve the intensive level of its utilization. In the utilization of many durable goods, there is a long-term low efficiency in the actual utilization level and design utilization ability, such as cars, bicycles and so on. Service exchange originated from banks, especially American community banks. Its basic principle is that community members will be treated equally, which is the basis of sharing economy standardization. The sharing of productive assets is mainly to improve the production and service capacity of relevant targets and reduce the consumption level of such assets. For example, the sharing office is actually very beneficial to the intensive use of space.

 Application scenarios of sharing economy

Scenario is the realistic support of sharing economy. The scenario of sharing economy refers to the life of sharing products and services. The purpose is to integrate the sharing business into the life scenarios of both the supply and demand sides, especially the demand side, and realize the expansion of the sharing economy business territory from the two dimensions of expanding the target customer group and increasing the customer time occupation. Scenario based thinking is mainly based on customers' positions and needs, focusing on the changes of customers' environment, purpose, habits, behavior and psychology in the process of product use and consumption. It is committed to setting up interactive and highly viscous experience centered on customers, paying attention to the functions of user perception, cross-border integration and community network, and establishing a life based on product and service application scenarios State system.

In the era of mobile Internet, the function of scene is constantly strengthened, which has become the basic elements of mobile communication, business mining, mode expansion and customer management. Mobile Internet has created a new era of scene service, which requires effective perception and feedback of scene and effective matching of its relevant information. After content, form and social interaction, scene becomes the fourth core element of communication. In a specific scenario, the behavior of customers will change significantly, which will affect the matching of supply and demand and the related pricing mechanism. The key to the scene contest is to find the main scene of the customer's life as the starting point of the core application. Based on the derivative service system of the Internet, the sharing economy is also based on scenarios.

With the rise of mobile Internet, the development of Internet Finance and the prosperity of Internet consumption, sharing economy has become a service system with deepening scenarios. The first is scene refinement. The open thinking of "everyone involved" in the sharing economy makes it easy for mass customers to form a clustering effect and internal self differentiation. The facilities of the scenario are similar to the segmentation of the market, which can be continuously refined. Most people can find familiar and suitable scenarios. At the same time, these market segments can form niche market and play the long tail effect and scale effect, and even realize the diminishing marginal cost. Second, the scene is online. The change of consumption behavior, especially the rise of online consumption, makes the consumption scenario closely related to mobile Internet, third-party payment and so on. The setting of scenario is more based on the customer online consumption experience. Scenario online enables supply and demand to gather in a third-party platform such as a sharing platform and use information technology to quickly match and connect. Third, the scene still relies on offline infrastructure to build a self-improvement cycle system. The application and implementation of online scenarios depend on offline resources, such as warehousing, logistics, distribution, physical data center, physical office space, training base, etc.