Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Contemporary Collaborative Consumption pp 77–96Cite as

Riding free-riders? A study of the phenomenon of BlaBlaCar in Italy

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Kritische Verbraucherforschung ((KV))

Abstract

The chapter analyses the case study of BlaBlaCar, which is a for-profit online platform offering carpooling services to connect people who need to travel with drivers who have empty seats. The carpooling offered by BlaBlaCar partially constitutes an act of contemporary collaborative consumption (CCC) because despite the brokerage company involved, which should lead us to count this practice of consumption among typical sharing economy activities, some of those involved in the ride sharing feel they are part of a community that advocates an alternative way of life to the classic model of private car use. Our empirical research has been carried out to understand the meanings and practices within the ‘social world’ of BlaBlaCar users. We investigate the evolution of carpooling to understand whether and how users’ carpooling experiences fluctuate over time. To reach these goals, we conducted 70 semi-structured interviews with people between 18 and 35 years old who had interacted with the collaborative platform at least twice. All the users involved in the fieldwork lived in the Veneto region of Italy, and the data were collected in 2015. We used the ATLAS.ti software to elaborate on the data for content analysis. The most important result of the research is the clarification of the relationship that drivers establish with the figure of the ‘stranger’.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   49.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Albinsson P. A., & Perera, Y. (2012). Alternative Market Places in the 21st Century: Building Community through Sharing Events. Journal of Consumer Behavior, 11: 303 – 315.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bardhi, F., & Eckhardt, G. M. (2012). Access-Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing. Journal of Consumer Research, 39, issue 4, p. 881 – 98, https://doi.org/10.1086/666376.

  • Bertolin, A., Beria P., & Filippini, G. (2016). Prime evidenze sul Carpooling in Italia: chi, dove e quando, Rivista di Economia e Politica dei Trasporti, n. 2, art. 1.

    Google Scholar 

  • Belk, R. (2014). You are what you can access: Sharing and collaborative consumption online. Journal of Business Research, 67, 1595 – 1600.

    Google Scholar 

  • Botsman, R., & Rodgers, R. (2010). What’s mine is yours: The rise of collaborative consumption. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Callon, M. (1998). The Law of the Market. Blackwell Publisher, Oxford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carfagna, L. B., Dubois, E. A., Fitzmaurice, C., Ouimette, M. Y., Schor, J. B., Willis, M., & Laidley, T. (2014). An emerging eco-habitus: The reconfiguration of high cultural capital practices among ethical consumers. Journal of Consumer Culture, 14(2), 158 – 178.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chan, N. D. & Shaheen, S. A. (2011). Ridesharing in North America: Past, Present and Future. Transport Review, 32(1), 93 – 112.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, B., & Kietzmann, J. (2014). Ride on ! Mobility business models for the sharing economy. Organization & Environment, 27, 279 – 296 http://oae.sagepub.com/content/27/3/279.short

  • Cox, J. C. (2004). How to identify trust and reciprocity. Games and Economic Behavior, Volume 46, Issue 2, 260 – 281, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0899-8256(03)00119-2.

  • Cruz, I. S., & Katz-Gerro, T. (2016). Urban public transport companies and strategies to promote sustainable consumption practices. Journal of Cleaner Production, 123, 28 – 33. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.12.007

  • de Kerckhove, D. (1997). Connected intelligence: the arrival of the Web society. Toronto: Somerville House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Degli Esposti, P. (2015). Peer-to-Peer File Sharing. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies. London, Wiley Blackwell, pp. 1 – 2.

    Google Scholar 

  • Di Minin, A., De Marco, C. E., Marullo, C., Piccaluga, A., Casprini, E., Mahdad, M., & Paraboschi, A. (2016). Case Studies on Open Innovation in ICT (No. JRC100823). Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Joint Research Centre.

    Google Scholar 

  • Farajallah, M., Hammond, R. G., & Pénard, T. (2016). What Drives Pricing Behavior in Peer-to-Peer Markets ? Evidence from the Carsharing Platform BlaBlaCar. Evidence from the Carsharing Platform Blablacar (August 23, 2016).

    Google Scholar 

  • Fellows, N. T., & Pitfield, D. E. (2000). An economic and operational evaluation of urban car-sharing. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 5(1), 1 – 10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Forno, F., & Garibaldi, R. (2015). Sharing Economy in Travel and Tourism: The case of home-swapping in Italy. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 16(2), 202 – 220.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fraiberger, S. P., & Sundararajan, A. (2015). Peer-to-peer rental markets in the sharing economy. NYU Stern School of Business Research Paper.

    Google Scholar 

  • Furuhata, M., Dessouky, M., Ordóñez, F., Brunet, M. E., Wang, X., & Koenig, S. (2013). Ridesharing: The state-of-the-art and future directions. Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 57, 28 – 46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giddens, A. (1991). The Consequences of Modernity. Polity Press; New Ed edition

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamari, J., Sjöklint, M., & Ukkonen, A. (2016). The sharing economy: Why people participate in collaborative consumption. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laamanen, M., Wahlen, S., & Campana, M. (2015). Mobilising collaborative consumption lifestyles: A comparative frame analysis of time banking. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 39 (5), 459 – 467. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijcs.12190.

  • Maturo, A., & Setiffi, F. (2016). The gamification of risk: how health apps foster self-confidence and why this is not enough. Health, Risk & Society, 17(7-8), 477 – 494.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mongili, A., & G. Pellegrino G. (eds.) (2014). Information infrastructure(s) Boundaries, Ecologies, Multiplicity, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mundler, M., Stocker, A., & Shaheen, S. (2016). Online and App-Based Carpooling in France: Analyzing Users and Practices – A Case Study of BlaBlaCar. In Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting (No. 16-1910).

    Google Scholar 

  • OECD & International Transport Forum (2015). The Sharing Economy: How shared self-driving cars could change city traffic, available http://www.itf-ecd.org/sites/default/files/docs/15cpb_self-drivingcars.pdf

  • Pais, I., & Mainieri, M. (2015). Il fenomeno della sharing economy in Italia e nel mondo. Equilibri, 1, 11 – 20, https://doi.org/10.1406/79306.

  • Pais, I., & Provasi, G. (2015). Sharing Economy: A Step towards the Re-Embeddedness of the Economy ? Stato e mercato, 3, 347 – 378, https://doi.org/10.1425/81604.

  • Paltrinieri, R. (2012). Felicità responsabile: il consumo oltre la società dei consumi. FrancoAngeli.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parmiggiani, P. (2013). Pratiche di consumo, civic engagement, creazione di comunità. Sociologia Del Lavoro, (132), 97 – 112.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rifkin, J. (2000). The age of access: The new culture of hypercapitalism. Where All of Life is a Paid-For Experience. Tarcher, New York, 33, 40 – 51.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schau, H. J., Muñiz Jr, A. M., & Arnould, E. J. (2009). How brand community practices create value. Journal of marketing, 73(5), 30 – 51.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schor, J. (2014). Debating the sharing economy. Essay published by the Great Transition Initiative, Tellus Institute. http://www.greattransition.org/images/GTI_publications/Schor_Debating_the_Sharing_Economy.pdf

  • Schor, J. B., & Fitzmaurice, C. J. (2015). Collaborating and connecting: the emergence of the sharing economy. Handbook of research on sustainable consumption, 410.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (2014). Giovani, occupati e tre volte smart: la prima ricerca sui viaggiatori italiani in ride sharing racconta una community che si sposta in modo consapevole. http://www.sssup.it/ist_news.jsp?ID_NEWS=4914&area=199&ID_LINK=10521&GTemplate=ist_home.jsp

  • Secondulfo, D. (2016). Il mondo di seconda mano. Sociologia dell’usato e del riuso. FrancoAngeli, Milano.

    Google Scholar 

  • Secondulfo, D. (2012). The three consumer profiles in Italy. Italian Sociological Review, 2(3), 125.

    Google Scholar 

  • Setiffi, F., & Lazzer, G. P. (2016). Di madre in madre. L’immaginario dei negozi di seconda mano per bambini. In D. Secondulfo (Ed.), Il mondo di seconda mano. Sociologia dell’usato e del riuso. FrancoAngeli, Milano.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shove, E., Trentmann, F., & Wilk, R. (2009). Time, Consumption and Everyday Life: Practice, Materiality and Culture. Oxford: Berg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simmel, G. (1900). The Philosophy of Money. London: Routledge (2004).

    Google Scholar 

  • Southerton, D., Olsen, W., Warde, A., & Cheng, S. L. (2012). Practices and trajectories: A comparative analysis of reading in France, Norway, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. Journal of Consumer Culture, 12(3), 237 – 262.

    Google Scholar 

  • Teal, R. F. (1987). Carpooling: who, how and why. Transportation Research Part A: General, 21(3), 203 – 214.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vincent-Geslin, S. (2008). Les “altermobilités”: analyse sociologique d’usages de déplacements alternatifs à la voiture individuelle: des pratiques en émergence ? (Doctoral dissertation, Paris 5).

    Google Scholar 

  • Wahlen, S., & Laamanen, M. (2017). Collaborative Consumption and Sharing Economies. In M. Keller, B. Halkier, T.-A. Wilska & M. Truninger (eds.), Routledge Handbook on Consumption. Oxford, UK: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Warde, A. (2014). After taste: Culture, consumption and theories of practice. Journal of Consumer Culture, 1469540514547828.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yates, L. (2016). Sharing, households and sustainable consumption. Journal of Consumer Culture, 22, https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540516668229

  • Zelizer, V. A. (2010). Economic lives: How culture shapes the economy. Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zelizer, V. A. (2007). The Purchase of Intimacy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Padova, Italy

    Francesca Setiffi

  2. Venice, Italy

    Gian Paolo Lazzer

Authors
  1. Francesca Setiffi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Gian Paolo Lazzer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Francesca Setiffi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Matosinhos, Portugal

    Isabel Cruz

  2. University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

    Rafaela Ganga

  3. Wageningen University , Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Stefan Wahlen

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Setiffi, F., Lazzer, G.P. (2018). Riding free-riders? A study of the phenomenon of BlaBlaCar in Italy. In: Cruz, I., Ganga, R., Wahlen, S. (eds) Contemporary Collaborative Consumption. Kritische Verbraucherforschung. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-21346-6_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-21346-6_5

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-658-21345-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-658-21346-6

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation