Why customers do not participate in the access economy

More and more firms offer service innovations to differentiate and sustain growth. Recent technological advances have enabled firms to develop access-based services (ABS), which offer customers an opportunity to access goods, conveniently and cost-effectively, without any transfer of ownership. Examples include car-sharing, tool-sharing, and bike-sharing programs. Although ABS offer several potential benefits, convincing customers to adopt and use these innovations remains challenging. Innovation failures can be very detrimental to firms. It is therefore important for ABS providers to understand (1) why customers would reject their innovations, and (2) how to reduce customer rejection.
To address these objectives, three sets of empirical investigations were conducted. The first study examines the barriers impeding customers’ adoption and usage of ABS, and the practices in which customers engage to attenuate those barriers themselves. The second study focuses on the contamination barrier and empirically examines across five experiments the effect of contamination concerns on customers’ evaluations of ABS, when these concerns become salient in ABS, and how firms can prevent such concerns. The third study finally explores the strategies that customers believe ABS providers should implement to influence customers’ trust and control perceptions, and ultimately reduce rejection of their innovation. This dissertation provides managers with relevant consumer-based insights to boost customer participation in the access economy.