The rise of the sharing economy: Is digital technology causing a regime switch in ethical consumption?

Dr. Fahmy used an Internal Grant for Research to study the development of the sharing economy due to digital technology and how it has changed consumer attitudes towards collaborative consumption.

The recent rise of digital technology has enabled the development of various online platforms that resulted in a variety of sharing and collaborative consumption activities. These activities formed a new type of economy, known as the sharing economy, which is causing a noticeable shift in consumer attitudes from traditional consumption to collaborative consumption. In this research project, we seek to test the validity of this hypothesis. In particular, we fit a regime switching nonlinear regression model to Canadian consumption and test whether or not technological change, measured by a technology index, has been causing a regime switch in the consumption data.