Many-to-many exchange without money: why people share their resources

Abstract

This paper extends our knowledge of the growing movement of collaborative consumption, or people sharing with others, in a collective shift away from the outright purchase of things. The focus of the study is on the sharing of land, one of our most widely held and debt-laden assets, for food production, a fundamental human need that has not been the topic of other collaborative consumption research. The research presents a netnographic study of the motivations to participate in Landshare, a non-profit scheme operating in the UK, Canada, and Australia, which “connects growers to people with land to share.” The study finds there are significant social belonging and other benefits stemming from collaborative consumption and, in the case of Landshare, a new finding not previously reported in consumer behaviour research, of physical and mental health benefits. This expands the study of exchange as a consumer-to-consumer phenomenon, where no money changes hands.

Keywords:

• netnography
• collaboration
• community
• sharing
• marketing exchange
• food production

Acknowledgement

The advice of the three anonymous reviewers is gratefully acknowledged for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

1 See for example, the website for collaborative consumption, accessed November 3, 2014. http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/directory/

2 http://www.landshareaustralia.com.au/var//uploads/users/4/textdoc/sample_agreement.pdf Accessed November 3, 2014.