I believe sharing economy is important in the modern society. Sharing economy, which is called collaborative consumption or consumer peer-to-peer rental, is a socio-economic ecosystem built around the sharing of human,physical, and intellectual resources such as spaces, goods, transportation, and services via the Internet. Sharing economy has been spreading in the U.S. and Europe but does not still spread in Japan. I think sharing economy has immense potential and we should pay more attention to sharing economy. I would like to explain the possibilities of sharing economy and its examples.
Sharing economy allow anyone to become a retailer thanks to the development of SNS. Business using this sharing economy is developing especially in the U.S. and the market is expected to grow up from about 15 billion dollars in 2013 to about 335 billion dollars in 2025.
Sharing economy has many advantages. Owners make money from underused assets while renters pay less than they would if they bought the goods themselves, or turned to a conventional provider such as a hotel or car-hire firm. In terms of the environment, sharing economy is green. For example, renting a car rather than owing one means helping to reduce CO2 because a car is used only when it is necessary. Secondary markets reduce demand for new goods, so environmental footprints go down. Staying in existing homes reduces the demand for new hotels.
Sharing economy can contribute to solving the social problem in Japan: Children on waiting list. There were 45,315 applicants who had been denied places in public nursery schools around the country because of a lack of spaces, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry. In sharing economy, the person who cannot leave a child with a nursery school use SNS which people who can take care of a child register.
Some people may say the safety and reliability are not guaranteed. However, mutual evaluation system can solve this problem. On mutual evaluation system, renters can see owners’ simple profile and evaluation and choose one of them. After sharing is over, they can evaluate owners. In such a way owners can do the same things. Actually Uber, ordinary people carry another person with a privately owned car in their spare time, in the U.S. adopted such a mutual evaluation system and succeeded.
In this way, sharing economy has many benefits regarding business, environment, and social problems. I think that this sharing economy plays a big role in the small country like Japan. As long as we apply and make the most of sharing economy more and more, sharing economy become better for people and society.