An Examination of the Motives for Using Sharing Economy Services

Carsharing, which appeared in Moscow in the early 2010s, turned out to be an effective tool for urban transport policy, and the Department of Transport's focus on the development of short-term car rental services has largely determined the multiple growth of the market from 2015 to 2020. For the first half of 2019, Muscovites and guests of the capital made more than 24 million trips using carsharing services - a million more than in the whole of 2018. For the whole of 2018, the carsharing market grew 5 times and reached a turnover of 7 billion rubles. The goal set by the mayor of the capital, Sergei Sobyanin, to make Moscow the world leader in terms of the size of the car-sharing fleet, was achieved in 2019 by increasing the fleet by 14.5 thousand new cars. In March 2020, the vehicle fleet is more than 30 thousand cars - much more than in the capitals of Japan and China - other leading countries in this area. The number of users, in turn, is growing steadily - by 12-15% per year from 2017 to 2020 - and has already exceeded one million people. The motivation for participating in collaborative consumption and carsharing, in particular, is not limited to purely economic rationalist factors, but may come from the moral beliefs of the user of the service. Leading researchers in the field of sharing economy (such as E. Bucher, R. Belk and Y. Benkler) identify a number of monetary and non-monetary factors of participation in the sharing, such as: pursuit of personal gain, creation and strengthening of social ties, obtaining unique consumer experience, aspiration to make the local community more comfortable, the desire to reduce the ecological footprint of society. In the context of the rapid development of car sharing as a service in Moscow, stakeholders from business and the state are interested in the scientific study of the motivational factors for participating in the car sharing of a Moscow consumer to adapt marketing policies and communications and increase its effectiveness. The thesis has the following structure: the first chapter looks into the theoretical foundations of sharing and its historical development economic theories of consumer motivation, the works of leading modern and classical authors in the field of shared consumption economics are considered. The second chapter is devoted to the analysis of world and domestic car sharing practices and the study of the structure and dynamics of the Moscow car sharing market and. The third chapter presents the results of an empirical study, cluster analysis in IBM SPSS, and SEM modeling in RStudio. Based on the data obtained during the study, recommendations were formed for stakeholders from business and the state regarding marketing support for car sharing in Moscow.