In the last years, the sharing economy has emerged as an alternative to traditional exchanges, introducing the idea that users can grant other users temporary access to their goods and services for economic compensation. Thisshift was made largely possible by technological evolutions: Sharing platforms, which match users who share (providers) with users willing to pay for access (consumers), are based online and many services are available exclusively through a smartphone.

This study explores consumer issues in five online peer to peer platform markets, and estimates that 191m citizens across the EU-28 spend EUR 27.9 billion per year on online P2P platforms. Of this total, an estimated EUR 10.61 billion consists of platform revenues and revenues of third parties.