Consultancy firm PwC set out to estimate the economic value of the sharing economy. To do so it identified five prominent sectors in the sharing economy and compared these sectors against traditional rental models.
Sharing economy Traditional rental
Peer to peer finance Equipment rental
Online staffing B&B and hostels
Peer to peer accommodation Book rental
Car sharing Car rental
Music and video streaming DVD rental
The researchers mapped all ten sectors against an S-curve economic model that tracks services and products from the early stages (niche) through 'normalisation', maturity and decline or rebirth.
Key findings
- The five sharing economy sectors currently generate $15bn in global revenues (5% of total revenue generated by all ten sectors researched)
- This could grow to an estimated $335bn by 2025. This would constitute over 50% of the revenue generated by the ten sectors
- The biggest predicted growth is expected to be achieved by peer-to-peer/crowdfunding – a predicted growth of 63% to 2025
- Online staffing will see the second largest growth (a predicted increase of 37%)
- Peer-to-peer accommodation (+31%); car sharing (+23%) and music and video streaming (+17%)
Sources: PwC; emarketer.