How does the perceived physical risk of COVID-19 affect sharing economy services?

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to shed light on how the perceived physical risk of COVID-19 influences users’ decisions to adopt shared accommodation and office services. To discuss the effect, this paper proposed a new integrated research model based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and the technology acceptance model (TAM), with the constructs of trust and perceived physical risk. The data were collected from 402 respondents via an online survey. The results indicate that perceived physical risk is a clear antecedent that negatively affects TPB, TAM constructs, and trust, with a new integrated research model with high explanatory power. Interestingly, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use fully mediated the effect of perceived physical risk on attitude. Thus, this study empirically confirmed current users’ concerns about COVID-19, which has reduced the use of sharing services, by operationally redefining perceived physical risk.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• shared accommodation
• shared office space
• sharing economy
• perceived physical risk
• trust

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2019S1A3A2098438).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Research Foundation of Korea: [Grant Number NRF-2019S1A3A2098438].