Toward a sustainable sharing economy with business model innovations in the clothing industry

The sharing economy provides an interesting playground in which to innovate business models with the aim of creating sustainable value. Despite the growing interest in the topic, the relationship between sharing economy business models and sustainability is still largely unknown. In this study, the focus is on examining how to increase the utilization of unused or underutilized assets through business models to create sustainable value. Based on the comprehensive analysis of sustainability-oriented companies in the Finnish clothing industry, 11 business model (BM) types with different internal development and cooperation levels were identified, guiding the development of BMs toward sharing. By applying a contingency theory, we identified different contingency factors interacting with BM components and affecting the potential of these BMs to increase the sustainable use of resources and move toward increased sustainable value creation. This new understanding contributes especially to the call to study BM innovations in contingent situations, and highlights the importance of considering the context while analyzing the sustainable value creation potential of sharing economy BMs.