Evaluation of shared digital economy adoption: Case of Airbnb

Electronic market is a new economic space created by the development of the Internet and it has more than a billion of potential customers. In addition to all of the elements that define a classic market, e-market generates entirely new ways of doing business, such as the shared economy. Shared economy is a sustainable economic system built around the sharing of private assets. This rather new system mostly relies on information technology (P2P) to empower individuals and other profit and non-profit organizations with ways of sharing excess capacity in goods, knowledge and services. Considering the fact that reliance and safety are crucial factors when it comes to sharing private assets, the value of those assets is increased just by sharing information about them. Airbnb.com, as an outstanding example of the new e-business model, enables individuals to rent their unoccupied living space and other short-term accommodation to guests. Besides being a rental mediator, Airbnb is also a social network used by its users to exchange experiences and interests related to traveling. The research was conducted by an online survey that was posted on the Airbnb Facebook wall. The objective of this research is to determine the structure of Airbnb users and certain advantages and disadvantages of this type of ebusiness. The data acquired by this research was processed by the methods of descriptive statistics.