Consumer Behavior and Behavioral Biases in the Sharing Economy

Sharing business models have been rapidly growing over the past decade. The general idea behind these platforms is that they offer consumers temporary access to (underutilized) products instead of ownership, which is mediated by the Internet. Apart from its economic relevance, the Sharing Economy is of particular interest to researchers, as prior studies have shown that the Sharing Economy seems to fundamentally change consumers´ consumption patterns. This dissertation systematically explores consumer behavior and behavioral biases in the Sharing Economy. More specifically, this dissertation analyzes the influence of behavioral biases on consumers´ tariff choice decisions in a sharing context. In doing so, this dissertation employs empirical and experimental methods and draws on theories from both marketing and behavioral economics. This dissertation consists of four articles. Article 1 and Article 2 are conceptual papers that set the foundation of this dissertation by providing theoretical insights on the state-of-the-art research on the Sharing Economy and on behavioral biases in marketing. Building on this theoretical foundation, two empirical articles (Article 3 and Article 4) analyze different research questions related to consumers´ decision-making in a tariff choice context.

Katharina Dowling is a Doctoral Researcher at the Institute of Electronic Commerce and Digital Markets at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München - Munich School of Management. She holds a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. from the University of Mannheim and the ESSEC Business School in Paris. She earned her Ph.D. in 2019 at LMU´s Munich School of Management.