WHEN TRUST BECOMES THE ECONOMY: A THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF STRUCTURAL DIMENSIONS IN THE SHARING ECONOMY

Abstract

The sharing economy fundamentally relies on decentralized peer-to-peer interactions. However, inherent transactional risks and uncertainties remain a pivotal challenge, and how trust evolves multidimensionally within platform discourses remains insufficiently conceptualized. Utilizing MAXQDA 2024 and drawing upon social exchange theory and signaling theory within platform ecosystems, this paper examines the structural dimensions of the sharing economy through an inductive qualitative thematic analysis of the complete official TED Talks playlist “The Economy of Trust”. Trust, platform entrepreneurship, reputation, and factors of economics are the four main variables identified in the paper. The results show that trust is the primary factor behind the sharing economy, and that its importance is growing with time. Furthermore, familiarity gives way to algorithmic design and platform-mediated risk management techniques in the structural evolution of reputation conceptualization. Platform entrepreneurship relies mainly on technology infrastructure and data assets. On the other hand, economic factors continue to be a baseline that is focused on operational efficiency, transaction costs, and asset capacity utilization. By providing an integrated, dynamic conceptual framework of trust-centered platform ecosystems and highlighting important implications for platform management, this study adds to the body of literature on strategic management.