Trust and the don't‐want‐to‐complain bias in peer‐to‐peer platform markets

Abstract This paper addresses peer‐to‐peer (P2P) digital platform markets, often associated with the “sharing economy” or the “collaborative economy”. Such digital platforms, facilitating new purchasing channels for consumers by matching P2P supply and demand, can be considered new market places challenging the conventional markets. How are P2P platform markets evaluated by the consumers? Based on a comprehensive survey‐data material, five different P2P service markets are considered by peer buyers and the results compared to consumers’ evaluations from similar conventional service markets according to trust , comparability and consumers’ satisfaction with the transactions. Comparability seems to be one advantage for the platform markets, while trust could become a problem. Conditions for trust in P2P platform markets is particularly interesting to study…