[Study] The consumer potential of Collaborative Consumption: Demographics

There is a concern that collaborative consumption is a privilege adopted predominantly by wealthy and highly educated millennials. However, results from Amsterdam indicate that there is substantial willingness to take part in collaborative consumption, outside this narrow demographic.

Respondents from different demographic groups proved willing to take part in different examples of collaborative consumption. A significant correlation was observed between education level and the willingness to take part in collaborative consumption; however, low educated respondents were still quite willing to take part in object sharing, for example (40%). Older respondents are significantly less likely to exchange gardens and accommodation but do not differ much when it comes to cars, rides, skills, objects and meals. An increased income only had a minor negative influence on the willingness. Just like gender, as women proved to be slightly more likely than men to take part in collaborative consumption. [Results per example are provided in the table below.] Thus when observing people’s willingness to take part in collaborative consumption, a potential emerges far beyond the wealthy and high educated millennial. Interestingly, more than 90 percent of the respondents had never heard of collaborative consumption, or any of the platforms that were mentioned in the survey.

Understandably, different people have different interests and needs. “Indeed, from the masses of baby boomers addicted to eBay to the Gen Xers increasingly using bartering services, people are participating in different types of collaborative consumption from a diverse array of subcultures and socioeconomic and demographic groups” (Botsman and Rogers, 2011). This research has demonstrated that there is growth potential in collaborative consumption, and businesses and start-ups can be confident that yet unreached demographic groups are willing to take part. It is up to the collaborative consumption platforms to open the door for them.

The complete thesis is available in the Resources section of this website and on Slideshare.

This research project is a collaboration between shareNL, Collaborative Lab, the Department for Research and Statistics of Amsterdam (O+S) and Utrecht University.

Different demographic groups and the percentages of the respondents that answered either likely or very likely ((v.) l.) or neutral (N.) *(N= <100)