ИСТИНА

Sharing economy initiatives have been around for decades. However, it is the advances in smartphone and internet platform technology that have enabled technologically superior sharing services to evolve in the last 10 years. Since 2014 the phenomenal growth of a few large commercial “sharing” platforms, the increasing number of economic sectors affected and conflicting interests among the stakeholders involved have made sharing economy a domain of conflictual rhetoric and public controversies, legal disputes and even violent protests. Lack of mutual understanding of key criteria to categorize an activity as part of sharing economy is widely acknowlegded to be a relevant problem for the scientific world [Botsman, 2015], [Codagnone, Martens, 2016], [Oh, Moon, 2016], [Ranjbari et al., 2018]. The purpose of this study is to prove the controversy of the term “sharing economy”, analyze the reasons behind the disagreement among scientists and propose a conceptual framework to address the current state of sharing economy and its future. Key results of the research: - scientific research papers are proven to be inconsistent about definition and conceptualization of sharing economy; - ambiguity of the term “sharing economy” is proven to bring semantic confusion and hinder further research and measurement of sharing economy; - the main reasons for the confusion are outlined as follows: (1) industry evolves faster than theory, (2) capitalistic system has adopted sharing economy as yet another business model resulting in a major structural shift in the sphere in the last 5 years, (3) marketing and branding of companies do not always truly represent their scope of activities in scientific terms. Examples of Lyft, Airbnb, Couchsurfing and carsharing industry are used to prove the point; - a comprehensive framework to address sharing economy is proposed. The framework consists of a broad definition of sharing economy, a definition of “true sharing” (both author elaborated) and a conceptual model and typology of sharing developed within the 2016 European Commission report [Codagnone et al., 2016] List of key references Botsman R. Defining the sharing economy: what is collaborative consumption – and what isn’t //Fast Company. – 2015. – Т. 27. – С. 2015. Codagnone C., Biagi F., Abadie F. The passions and the interests: Unpacking the 'sharing economy' //Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, JRC Science for Policy Report. – 2016. Codagnone, C., and B. Martens. 2016. ‘Scoping the Sharing Economy: Origins, Definitions, Impact and Regulatory Issues.’ //Institute for Prospective Technological Studies Digital Economy Working Paper 2016/01 Oh S., Moon J. Y. Calling for a shared understanding of the sharing economy //Proceedings of the 18th Annual International Conference on Electronic Commerce: e-Commerce in Smart connected World. – ACM, 2016. – С. 35. Ranjbari M., Morales-Alonso G., Carrasco-Gallego R. Conceptualizing the sharing economy through presenting a comprehensive framework //Sustainability. – 2018. – Т. 10. – №. 7. – С. 2336.