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Summary Report: Northeastern University SHARE Conference Sharing Economy: Technology, Equity and Applications

March 21-22, 2019

Understanding opportunities and consequences associated with the sharing economy requires the collaboration of individuals and organizations with a wide range of expertise, including economists, engineers, investors, community stakeholders, law makers and others. The overarching aim of this two-day conference was to stimulate discussions and insights related to how we as a global society should innovate, regulate, and utilize this emerging market force.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PANEL DISCUSSIONS ....................................................................................................................... 2

PANEL: Urban Mobility ............................................................................................................... 2

PANEL: Cloud Computing ............................................................................................................ 2

PANEL: Entrepreneurship and Business Model Innovation ........................................................ 4

PANEL: Distributed Electricity ..................................................................................................... 4

KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS .............................................................................................................. 5

KEYNOTE: Making Sharing Transformative: How sustained collaboration is essential to drive real impact .................................................................................................................................. 5

KEYNOTE: Are Platforms Free Riding on Conventional Employers? A study of supplemental and dependent earners across 7 platforms ................................................................................ 6

KEYNOTE: Public Policy Challenges and Opportunities in the Sharing Economy ....................... 6

KEYNOTE: How the Sharing Economy and Digital Platforms are Transforming Cities ............... 7

OVERVIEW OF PAPER SESSIONS ..................................................................................................... 8

PAPER SESSION: Platform Mobility & Business Models Paper Session ...................................... 8

PAPER SESSION: Labor and Culture ............................................................................................ 9

PAPER SESSION: Sustainability & Social Impacts ...................................................................... 10

WORKSHOP SESSIONS ................................................................................................................... 11

WORKSHOP: Platform Technologies ........................................................................................ 11

WORKSHOP: Legal & Regulatory Issues .................................................................................... 12

WORKSHOP: Social Impacts & Equity ....................................................................................... 12

ENVISIONING NEXT STEPS............................................................................................................. 13

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................. 14

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PANEL DISCUSSIONS

PANEL: Urban Mobility

Moderator: Christo Wilson — Khoury College of Computer Science, Northeastern University Panelist: Lindsey Cameron — Ross School of Business, University of Michigan Panelist: Maged Dessouky — School of Engineering, University of South California Panelist: Nigel Jacob — Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics Panelist: Yafeng Yin — Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan

Discussion covered sharing economy applications in the urban mobility context, their impacts on transportation systems, possible negative externalities, and future implications. Ride sharing platforms transform urban mobility systems by introducing a faster —and sometimes cheaper— alternative to relying on personal vehicles or utilizing public transportation. Positive effects can include reducing transaction costs and providing a unified system that works in multiple cities. Ride hailing platforms can cause negative externalities, such as increased congestion. These externalities may decline in the long term as regulatory approaches evolve over time.

There is potential for future technologies such as self-driving cars to increase efficiency of the system by reducing dead-end miles and parking times. These new technologies have many far-reaching applications across sectors. Regulators need new tools to manage transportation systems in a dynamic fashion. Approaches to designing traffic infrastructure, such as signs and intersections, also must evolve. There are socio-economic potential consequences for ride sharing service drivers who would lose their source of income after introducing autonomous vehicles.

To reduce the negative externalities caused by the ride sharing and ride hailing platforms, pricing mechanisms and regulations are the two main approaches which might be employed. Pricing mechanisms are effective on the targeted externality. For example, congestion tax might be introduced to reduce congestion level, and ride prices might be impacted by the occupancy level of the vehicles to encourage ride sharing. However, there is not a single universal formula for implementing pricing mechanisms in different cities. Also, the pricing mechanisms should be supported by a regulatory framework to ensure efficiency. Collaboration among stakeholders impacted by platform-based urban mobility is required to establish regulations which equitably distribute positive and negative externalities. While designing regulations, unique demographics and infrastructures of cities must be considered.

PANEL: Cloud Computing

Moderator: David Kaeli — Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Northeastern University Panelist: Emmanuel Arzuaga — Computer Science and Engineering, University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM) Panelist: John Goodhue — Massachusetts Green High-Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC)

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Panelist: Carole-Jean Wu — School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, Arizona State University | Facebook’s AI Infrastructure

Panelists began with a discussion

of the challenges facing cloud computing developers who are exploring sharing platform models. Professor Wu noted the challenge of minimizing the costs of cloud ownership and the uprising challenge of security and data privacy since there have been several incidents of attack in the past few years. Building on that, Professor Arzuaga underscored the perspective that data privacy is among the biggest challenges

confronting cloud developers. He also raised the issue of data storage and argued that developers need to answer questions, such as: (1) how do we collect, manage, and store this huge amount of data that is predictably to become even larger in the future?, and (2) how do we find smart ways of sharing the data with the right people? Finally, Goodhue noted that the growing demands for cloud and velocity of data will be a significant challenge in the future. There’s also the challenge of pricing the service of resource management of cloud providers.

Next, Professor Kaeli asked how could we build more community clouds or low-cost public clouds in the future? John Goodhue replied that there are three barriers to the proliferation of small sized public clouds: (1) economy of scale, (2) management capacity, and (3) portability. Professor Arzuaga and Professor Wu elaborated on the issue of cloud administration and the costs of maintenance. Professor Wu noted that the life cycle of systems that we put into data centers follows Moore’s law roughly in a sense that every 3 years we cycle out the processors we put into the data center.

The discussion then moved on to edge computing. The panelists shared thoughts on how the introduction of fog and edge computing technology may transform cloud services. The three experts agreed on that, since today we all own edge devices and we all run edge services in the cloud, edge devices are generating data at rates that are increasing massively. Therefore, experts in this field need to figure out questions related to how to balance service efficiency, performance, and user privacy. Also, developers need to manage where computation happens (on the device? in cloud? or somewhere in between), and how to optimize the allocation of resources geographically to provide services to mobile devices.

Next, the panel explored the security and reliability challenges we face today when sharing data in the cloud environment. Professor Wu discussed her research on the data privacy side of machine learning in Facebook. One of the techniques her research team is looking at is the homomorphic encryption technique, which can enable some of the machine learning inferences on encrypted data. The challenge is that it’s difficult to run the technique on real time. Professor Arzuaga argued that another aspect of the security challenges might be developing a model which can anonymize the input user information or detach user-based data from the particular search targets. Goodhue emphasized the profound impacts of security and reliable clouds on both democratic and non-democratic societies.

Finally, the panel discussed some existing and potential models for generating new successful cloud computing start-ups. Professor Wu summarized that we should look at the three components for building a data center infrastructure: networking, storage, and computation. Most current research has been focusing on improving computing performance, but we should focus on how these three components can be better coordinated.

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PANEL: Entrepreneurship and Business

Model Innovation

Moderator: Babak Heydari — Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Northeastern University Panelist: Andrew Gouldstone — Michael J. and Ann Sherman Center for Engineering Entrepreneurship Education, Northeastern University Panelist: Wes Kussmaul — AuthentiShare Panelist: James Zimbardi — RentItems Boston Marshall Van Alstyne — Questrom School of Business, Boston University

Panelists in this session shared a diverse range of perspectives on challenges and opportunities for emerging entrepreneurs entering the sharing economy space. Wes Kussmaul and James Zimbardi reflected that tolerance for risk is among the biggest challenges facing entrepreneurs pursuing business development in the sharing economy—it is a challenge for innovators in this space to secure startup capital and loans. Andrew Gouldstone focused on the need for training programs at the university level to provide students with insights on the changing business landscape. Students generally value their independence and should be supported in conducting independent research. Issues around trust go beyond trust the other party in a given transaction, there are also issues of workers’ and users’ trust in the system itself. Innovation is needed in payment processing technologies and access to the software models to support sharing economy businesses.

PANEL: Distributed Electricity

Moderator: Jennie Stephens — School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs and Global Resilience Institute, Northeastern University Panelist: Lynne Kiesling — Department of Economics, Purdue University Panelist: Cecilio Ortiz Garcia — University of Puerto Rico INESI Panelist: Marla Perez-Lugo — University of Puerto Rico INESI Panelist: Halina Szejnwald Brown — Newton Climate Action Plan Panelist: Forrest Watkins — Solstice Community Solar

The panel framed the discussion of future distributed electricity systems as an opportunity for greater societal sustainability and resilience in the face of climate change impacts. Professors Perez-Lugo and Ortiz Garcia reflected that devastation brought by Hurricane Maria presented an opportunity to redevelop a more just and environmentally sustainable electrical system in the island. It is important to

understand the ways in which social dynamics vary across places with different cultures, governance systems and historical legacies.

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Professor Kiesling discussed research on using dynamic pricing models to manage and share electricity within a neighborhood-scale, which can reduce the transmission costs. Microgrid development is an important area for technical and policy research—researchers and innovators in this space look forward to a future in which there is widespread instances of residential spaces where solar energy production and electrical vehicles are linked, while also being able to supply energy to surrounding homes. Professor Ortiz Garcia drew attention to the broader question of sharing platforms as tools to connect networks of knowledge and resources to effect positive change.

KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS

KEYNOTE: Making Sharing Transformative: How sustained collaboration is essential to

drive real impact

Cheryl Martin, Harwich Partners, former Head of the Centre for Global Industries at the World Economic Forum

Opening keynote speaker Dr. Martin introduced three defining features of the sharing economy: (1) use of technology to match buyers and sellers, (2) capitalization on idle capacities, and (3) trust-verification. The talk then considered a range of concepts that are associated with the sharing economy— including collaborative consumption, peer-to-peer economy, gift economy, circular economy, crowd economy. The sharing economy concept continues to gain momentum globally but also presents risks and challenges to society—related to trust and reputation, safety, security, social inequities, service exclusion and demands on public infrastructure. Policy-makers around the world are interested in the positive potential of sharing platforms to deliver services and increase social connections—as well as exploring approaches to taxation and regulation.

Operating models for optimization of asset use across the financial-social spectrum were introduced. Case studies of the powerful potential to use platforms to optimize access and efficient distribution of assets include tools for sharing medical equipment among healthcare facilities, time banking, and filling spare warehouse capacity. There are critical issues that platform owners and regulators must address to enable success of these models related to trust and reputation among actors in the network of service providers and users. There are two primary approaches for facilitating trust-building on platforms: community-based and institutional based.

Dr. Martin drew linkages between the sharing economy and emerging players in the circular economy. Example organizations and companies discussed include: Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE) which provides top-down platform leadership, The Global Battery Alliance platform established which is scaling-up efforts to ensure a sustainable battery value chain. Harnessing the power and potential for sharing platforms to solve global social and environmental challenges will require sustained collaboration and commitment by diverse actors.

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KEYNOTE: Are Platforms Free Riding on Conventional Employers? A study of

supplemental and dependent earners across 7 platforms

Juliet Schor, Professor of Sociology, Boston College

Professor Schor’s keynote talk focused on experiences of earners on a range of different sharing economy platforms. Case study research began in 2011, focusing on 13 different platforms, including Timebank, Food Swap, Makerspace, Airbnb, Taskrabbit, Open Access Education, Lyft, and Uber. With respect to labor, the research investigated the degree to which workers have power on these platforms, for example, choosing the hours they work. A question at the core of this research is whether and to what degree platform-based businesses freeride on conventional employers by enabling a certain class of employee to earn supplemental salary while retaining the benefits provided by a traditional employer. Schor argued that the key to understanding the platform labor force is that that they are a diverse body of workers, and they experience diverse outcomes depending on the platforms with which they engage and their status within traditional occupations.

Researchers looked at workers’ levels of satisfaction, scheduling flexibility, total income, and safety issues. Interviews and surveys were conducted among 111 individuals working within 7 platform businesses between 2013- 2016. The majority of these workers have attained high education levels. Economic and satisfaction outcomes depend in large part on how dependent a worker is on platform income to pay their basic expenses. Supplemental workers have more flexibility than dependent workers. Labor market conditions and situations are key to understanding the degree to which platforms can control worker behavior via algorithms.

KEYNOTE: Public Policy Challenges and Opportunities in the Sharing Economy

Daniel Castro, Director of the Center for Data Innovation, Vice President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

The challenges in regulating sharing economy platforms are multifaceted, and there are numerous possible approaches that can be applied. Data innovation leader Castro identified five primary policy issues that entrepreneurs in the sharing economy space must grapple with: consumer protection, competition, workers, environmental impacts, and taxes and trade. The sharing economy brings new questions within each of these areas. For example, taxi services were provided by local companies and were not part of the trade regulations, but a ride hailing company can provide the service in a different country and the taxi service is transformed into tradable, even international in this example. Public opinion is mostly against the government involvement and there is no clear methodology for policy makers to follow. Policy makers must look at nuances and engage with

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stakeholders, platforms and other participants of sharing economy when designing the regulations that impact the application and use of sharing platform tools. Castro concluded with the thought that the innovation principle must be given preference relative to the precautionary principle when possible to encourage entrepreneurship and maximize benefits of platform businesses across society.

KEYNOTE: How the Sharing Economy and Digital Platforms are Transforming Cities

Harmen van Sprang, Sharing Cities Alliance and ShareNL

This final keynote presentation of the conference began with a variety of examples of emerging sharing platforms active in Europe, including toy sharing, tool sharing, meal sharing, boat sharing, clothing renting, energy sharing, bike sharing and so on. These examples represent the capabilities of sharing to improve the individuals’ sense of community and social connectedness. These platforms also have potential to allow individuals to broaden the scope of their role in society—for example, by enabling farmers to become energy providers or someone employed in a conventional job to host dining experiences at their home. Traditional companies are also tapping in to this new movement as they increasingly observe the benefits of increased peer-to-peer sharing of resources and information.

The Sharing Cities Alliance engages with and draws inspiration from cities around the world, including Seoul, South Korea, where 84% of the people responded to surveys as willing to share. There are examples of city government officials actively engaging to encourage positive impacts of sharing platforms, but also recognizing that new approaches are needed to deal with challenges brought by changing patterns of worker and consumer behavior. For example, Amsterdam has faced difficulties in designing policies for regulating AirBnb. The Sharing Cities Alliance continues to explore more ways to reach people and has future plans to create an open database to benefit researchers.

Looking at any concept from a new perspective and adopting new attitudes enables society to come to new and creative solutions. One example of this is the “Right to Challenge” initiative in the Netherlands, a platform which allows residents to take over tasks from municipalities which gives a very good example of a government being in dialogue with the platforms. Really talking to the people behind the platforms and opening up the dialogue helps improvement in both sides. Another example about highlighting different perspectives on regulation and innovation contrasted approaches in DC, where the city government found an innovative way for collaboration with Uber and Lyft, whereas in Barcelona these big players in platform mobility were barred from operating in the city. The speech wrapped up with a powerful exploration of the opportunity to shift perspectives and innovate solutions that go beyond the following dichotomies: private/public, power/empower, economy/ecosystem, smart/intelligent, construction/co-creation, customers/citizens and to-yourself/together. Sharing is not the mere exchanging of materials and resources, but also has power to build trust and sense of community.

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OVERVIEW OF PAPER SESSIONS

PAPER SESSION: Platform Mobility & Business Models Paper Session

Moderator: Mehdi Behroozi — Northeastern University

The Global Rise of Platform Firms in Urban Mobility Markets Jason Jackson — Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

In the first paper presented during this session, Dr. Jackson focused on questions of informality and how transformations occur by disruptive platforms such as Uber in the presence of these informalities. He started his talk by introducing the concept of informalities in the context of urban mobility, where ‘disorganized’ systems are coexisting with formal transportation systems in certain parts of the world. The inception of Lyft was discussed with respect to the idea that Lyft is related to the intrinsic efficiency of these informal systems. Two case studies from Bangkok and Dar-es Salaam provided examples of disruptive platforms in the presence of informalities. These two case studies highlighted the territorial issues and contractual issues associated with platform mobility business models.

Spatio-Temporal Pricing for Ridesharing Platforms Hongyao Ma — Harvard University

The research presented by Dr. Ma applies an algorithmic point of view to understand the market-design aspect of mobility platforms, focusing on cases of dispatching and pricing in these mobility platforms to provide strategies to guarantee welfare for drivers and riders. Dr. Ma provided three examples of market failures in Uber’s system which is caused by inefficient pricing strategies. The myopic pricing mechanisms currently used by the mobility providers incentivize drivers to hack the system, whereas the pricing strategy should provide prices that are smooth, allowing both the drivers and riders to be satisfied with their outcomes in terms of costs and earnings. Dr. Ma next introduced a pricing methodology called the Spatio-Temporal Pricing Algorithm, which aims to provide smooth pricing, demonstrating the effectiveness of the algorithm in a gaming example that represents a sporting event.

Why Sharing Firms Don’t Always Share Kwong Chan — Northeastern University

The research presented by Dr. Chan focused on gaining a deeper understanding of sharing economy systems and analyzing the behavioral aspects of these platforms. The talk began with an introduction of Sharing Economies and the familiar story about the rise of sharing platforms such as Uber and Lyft. The key point underlined in the introduction was that the Sharing Economy trend is not a trend that is going away soon and that what people understand from Sharing Economies is not necessarily the same. He then went on to explain a filtering study where the goal is to scan a large portion of the existing literature about sharing economies in order to identify the most commonly associated terms with the concept. Another question that the research tried to answer was to assess whether there is trust in the system and how trust can be quantified. In order to answer these questions, the research analyzed various decision-making strategies. Dr. Chan finalized his speech by explaining the behavioral factors found by these studies that are impeding sharing in the platforms.

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Part-time Workers and Reserve Labor Dynamics on Platforms: Some Insights from a Field Study of Uber Drivers H. C. Robinson — Northeastern University

The research presented by Dr. Robinson focused on the workforce side of the equation and was focused on the research and survey results on Uber drivers. She began by explaining how the shift to Uber driving began, which is caused mainly by platform change and middle-class poverty. She emphasized how Uber primarily markets for middle-class and how Uber turned a classic low-status occupation into a middle-class job. She also provided some insight about the demographics of full-time and part-time Uber drivers and the true income of being a driver for Uber. She then explained how the full-time drivers are carrying the most weight in the system and the existence of part-time drivers serves as labor which takes away negotiating power from the full-time drivers. In the last part of her talk, Dr. Robinson told her experiences from her meeting with the UberBLACK drivers in Logan airport. These drivers were able to organize some internal systems to make Uber work for their benefit but were flagged after being detected. But they able to get some of their demands met by Uber after discussion, which shows that when they organize full-time drivers have some negotiating power.

PAPER SESSION: Labor and Culture

Moderator: Steven Vallas — Northeastern University

Making Out While Driving: Control, Coordination, and its Consequences in Algorithmic Labor Lindsey D. Cameron — University of Michigan

Several examples of an Uber driver that scape to be controlled by the app come to these questions: Is the driver autonomous or being controlled? How is the work structure and how can workers express autonomy? Cameron described the traditional controlling system by the owner and lower level managers and how the algorithmic control differs from it. An algorithmic control system has been designed by computer scientists to be most efficient. In other aspects, the algorithms are based on social ways in which individuals can interact with them. She collected data by being a driver and interviewing other drivers on the platform. Cameron analyzed different interaction algorithms to answer the first research question. Cameron showed how drivers express autonomy, for example a driver can have the passenger app to check the area that has less cars and a better chance to get a trip. The presentation concluded with points on how algorithmic control works.

Culture and Collective Identity in Gig Work William Attwood-Charles — Boston College

This paper described de-identification, which involves rejecting collective identity frames while affirming individual identity. The work emphasized aspirational identity and the temporary nature of gig economy work in such a way that individuals think of themselves as professionals rather than as workers. Dr. Attwood-Charles finds that identity is primarily activated through participation in message boards and occasional face-to-face interactions.

Socioeconomic Analysis and Geographic Patterns of Host Participation in the Shared Accommodation Economy – Airbnb in Los Angeles, California Avijit Sarkar (presenter), Mehrdad Koohikamali and James Pick — University of Redlands

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Dr. Sarkar’s work reveals that short term home sharing platforms such as Airbnb are changing

cities. There is extensive research on user-side impacts, but analysis of providers has been lacking in academic literature. Sarkar examines spatial patterns and socioeconomic relationships of participation in the shared accommodation economy by Airbnb hosts in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Sarkar’s team’s model recognizes a diversity of sharers in terms of demography, yet most reside in close proximity to urban areas. Researchers found positive association of professional, scientific, and technical services employment and black population with host participation and complete lack of association of trust and social capital. Dr. Sarkar discussed directions for future research that involves zip code analysis, considers hosts’ motivations, and utilizes survey data.

The Fault in the Stars: Public Reputation and the Reproduction of Racial Inequality on Airbnb Mehmet Cansoy — Fairfield University

The final paper of the session was presented by Dr. Cansoy, who investigates the fairness in rating

systems. According to popular perception, rating systems tend to be fair and create equal opportunities for service providers to be promoted. However, statistical data reveals that this is not always the case. Data from AirBnb ratings in Boston area were analyzed, revealing that the ratings for non-white hosts are below average, while accounting for geographic location and other characteristics of the rental property.

PAPER SESSION: Sustainability & Social Impacts

Moderator: Matthew Eckelman — Northeastern University

Social Interactions in the Sharing Economy: A Double Edge Sword? Dafna Goor — Harvard University and Amir Grinstein — Northeastern University

The first paper in the session, presented by Drs. Grinstein and Goor, used marketing techniques to determine if participating in the sharing economy leads to more or less social anxiety, and how this might influence preference or perception of sharing economy benefits. Many sharing economy platforms tout the benefits of ‘real interactions’ and social satisfaction, so this research was designed to test such assertions. A series of surveys were delivered via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, describing different scenarios for ride sharing and shared dining, contrasted with more conventional taxis or dining situations. Interestingly, for the majority of the surveys, the sharing economy scenarios led to statistically significant increases in social anxiety and less satisfaction, suggesting that the majority of respondents are not yet comfortable with sharing and that privacy remains an important concern.

Is Sharing More Sustainable? New Product Sales During the Transition from Low- to High- Product Utilization David Keith and Sergey Naumov — Sloan School of Business, MIT

The next paper in the session also focused on ride sharing services, but this time from the perspective of physical goods. Drs. Keith and Naumov constructed system dynamics models to simulate the demand for new vehicles for scenarios where ride sharing supplies a significant share of personal transportation services, allowing some people to avoid purchasing cars. In these scenarios, vehicles are used more consistently throughout the day and week, leading to more wear and tear but also more vehicle miles travelled. The results hinge on whether or not this increased utilization captures more of the engine

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life of each vehicle, essentially whether cars last for more miles. If total miles travelled by each ride sharing vehicle remains the same, then the reduction in people owning vehicles is balanced by the faster turnover in ride sharing vehicles, such that the overall market for vehicles remains the same. However, if ride sharing leads to increased total mileage per car, then sales will go down, but not precipitously.

Who wants my half eaten sandwich? Food waste in the sharing economy Tamar Makov — Yale University

The final paper in the session transitioned to look at food sharing, based on data shared by the UK company OLIO. Dr. Makov used a combination of machine learning, spatial statistics, and life cycle assessment to determine what gets shared, from who to whom, and what are the environmental benefits. Approximately 200,000 individual exchanges of food in the London area were analyzed. Prevention of food waste was considered against the increased emissions associated with travelling to pick up the free food. However, for all transportation scenarios, the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions associated with preventing food waste were high enough to offset the increased transportation emissions, so there were net environmental benefits. Spatial analysis revealed that a small majority of exchanges were from wealthier areas to less-wealthy areas, indicating a redistribution of resources (or ‘charity in disguise’), rather than collaborative consumption model.

WORKSHOP SESSIONS

WORKSHOP: Platform Technologies

Facilitator: Michael Kane — Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northeastern University

Participants discussed matching algorithms and behavior dynamics impacting platform performance. Attendees shared their knowledge and opinions on existing practices in different markets and possible research directions to improve the public benefit of the sharing platforms. The discussion started with matching algorithms and their applications in different platforms, mostly centered on urban mobility and logistics examples. It is noted that there are several factors that impact the algorithm design and performance such as level of competition for the supply and demand and regulations. Also, it is stated that some social goals, such as equity among workers, are not among the objectives of the algorithms.

The discussion moved to the behavioral dynamics of supply and demand in sharing platforms. Although generally monetary incentives are used to impact supply and demand side behaviors in the platforms, some non-monetary incentive schemes are also applied, such as stimulating sense of achievement with messages such as, “1 more transaction to complete 50 transactions today”. The non-monetary incentive are successful for short term, and some rewarding system is required to make them useful in longer term. Lastly, potential research questions were discussed. Some of the research questions: (1) Should social goals be included in the platform algorithms, and how to implement them if they are required? (2) How can we model the supply and demand side behaviors and how can we incorporate the behavioral models and matching algorithms to maximize the benefits? (3) How can we analyze and impact the supply and demand side elasticity so that incentive mechanisms would produce desired effects?

Overarching interests relate to matching algorithms and behavior dynamics and how they affect the performance of platforms. There are interesting variations in platforms that are based on transactions

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between 1 worker- 1 consumer or 1 worker- multiple consumers, such as ride sharing. Questions about scaling relate to supply vs demand, variability, and infrastructure effects. There is a trade-off between matching time and the precise approximation. Key concepts to investigate related to behavior are: reliability, experience, measurability, dedication and the challenge of switching behaviors such as different working hours and continue behaviors such as the number of jobs that we dedicate to a person. There are many opportunities for testing behavior models, data transparency approaches, and classification systems for groups of users. Professor Kane summarized the discussion stating that sharing platforms can pursue one of two design pathways: 1) they can consider people as robots, their behavior envisioned as noise than has been added to the system, or 2) they can actively look at interpersonal relationships to understand how to design the platform.

WORKSHOP: Legal & Regulatory Issues

Facilitator: Rashmi Dyal-Chand — School of Law, Northeastern University

The Legal & Regulatory Issues breakout session set out to review the current state of research on the regulation of the sharing economy and to discuss future research directions. Seven attendees, including scholars at leading research universities, a CEO, and current graduate students, shared their ideas and debated the best avenues moving forward. The conversation was guided by topics covered the previous day at the Share Conference, including a need to address externalities and market failure, a desire to protect workers and create equal access to sharing platforms, and the hope to preserve equity. The conversation began with questioning which leaders or entities should be or are responsible for regulating the sharing economy. Attendees noted that sharing platforms are massive and include many countries, not just the United States of America. A question was then posed if the solution lies with the creation of an international body charged with regulating the sharing economy. On the other hand, the example of New York City’s regulation on Uber was discussed, leading to the idea that perhaps local and state governments are better equipped with regulating the sharing economy. Regardless as to which entities should govern the sharing economy, it was evident that further research needed to be done before that question could be answered. The conversation then moved towards generating potential research questions, several of which that were agreed upon include: 1) What would people’s ideal transportation system look like and then craft policy based off of that system; 2) Is “sharing” actually reducing consumption; 3) Is it possible for sharing platforms to pay into social security; and 4) Will ridesharing exist in ten years and if it does how drastically different will it be?

WORKSHOP: Social Impacts & Equity

Facilitator: Daniel O’Brien — School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northeastern University.

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This workshop session opened with reflections from Professor O’Brien on the ways that researchers, policymakers, and practitioners can work together to leverage modern digital data (i.e., “big data”) to better understand and serve cities. His own work focuses on the behavioral and social dynamics of urban neighborhoods, particularly those that directly impact a place’s future upward (or downward) trajectory. Participants worked in small groups to do the following: 1) review the current state of research on social impacts of the sharing economy and questions about equity associated with the sharing economy, 2) explore possible research directions

for the future related to equity and the social impacts of the sharing/access economy, and 3) define specific research projects that would be of interest related to this theme.

There was animated conversation about real world examples, which led to the following reflections about important considerations when looking at the consequences of new and emerging business models, labor arrangements, and relationships between service providers and consumers. Equity, justice, resilience, and democracy are concepts that algorithm designers need to consider—beyond simply designing systems for efficiency. To understand equity well, we must ask the following questions: 1) what are the mechanisms by which an event, policy, or intervention could impact communities? 2) how do these mechanisms relate to demographic / socioeconomic groups? 3) how do inequalities relate to historic inequities? and 4) what are the practical implications of solving the problem? Topics for consideration included: systematic bias from the data, equity of data access across different platforms and the question of which actors in society benefit from growth in the sharing economy.

ENVISIONING NEXT STEPS

The closing session was facilitated by SHARE team’s lead PI, Professor Ozlem Ergun, who began by summarizing central themes in the conference and reflecting on goals for future steps of the SHARE research team. Conference lessons that were highlighted include the complexity of designing experiments and developing innovations for the sharing economy and the need for interdisciplinary conversation in this dynamic situation where previous disruptors are rapidly becoming incumbents, and in the context of an uneven regulatory landscape. There are many important research questions related to the impacts of global platforms within local regulatory, political, and social frameworks. Opportunities for enhanced data sharing and gaps in data availability should continue to be addressed. The vision for future research is to look at where opportunities exist for achieving economically viable and socially sustainable outcomes from sharing economy businesses. The complex issues discussed throughout the conference cannot be solved by

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companies, governments or nonprofits alone. There is compelling need to develop frameworks and theories for analyzing the complex sharing economy systems and their impacts.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We wish to thank each of the researchers, students and public and private sector participants who contributed their energy and thoughtful questions at this conference. In particular, we would like to thank everyone who presented their original research in the form of posters and papers. Each of our four keynote speakers brought a unique lens to considering the possibilities and implications of the growing sharing economy. Thank you too to our 17 panelists, distributed among 4 different panels. The contributions of these individuals enabled a fascinating dialogue to unfold about specific challenges and emerging ideas within several different sectors. Finally, we are grateful to Northeastern University undergraduate and graduate student participants—many of whom are enrolled in Spring 2019 semester courses focused on the sharing economy. Special thanks to Qingtao Cao, Necati Oğuz Duman, Matthew Eckelman, Andrew Farrington, Elmira Karimi, Laiyang Ke, Dinghao Ma and Kerem Tuncel, who collectively provided notes about every session of the conference, enabling this report of conference proceedings.