Access economy

The access economy is a business model where goods and services are traded on the basis of access rather than ownership: it refers to renting things temporarily rather than selling them permanently. The term arose as a correction to the term sharing economy because major players in the sharing economy, such as Airbnb, Zipcar, and Uber, are commercial enterprises whose businesses do not involve any sharing.

This model uses a technology platform, often accessed via mobile phone, to connect suppliers willing to rent assets (e.g., apartments for rent or cars for transportation services) with consumers. This may reduce the need for intermediaries (e.g., organized businesses such as taxi companies) between the supplier and consumer. Such platforms may also be used to connect employers and laborers for short-term employment opportunities, bypassing traditional employment services firms and employer-employee relationships. This is a movement was worth around $26 billion a year in 2015.

The number of persons involved in the access economy is not easily measured. The "access economy" or "on-demand economy" poses regulatory and political challenges, such as: defining the nature of the employment relationship; designing regulations to safeguard parties to these transactions; the loss of taxes and corporate access that results from moving away from small locally owned companies to large remote technology companies; and the bypassing of local regulations (such as the requirement for taxi drivers to provide wheelchair vans, or provide drivers 24-7).

The companies mentioned above represent technology platforms that connect suppliers willing to rent their assets to consumers interested in temporarily using those assets. For example, owners of real estate may offer an apartment or bedroom for rent on a weekly basis, or the owner of a car may offer taxi-like services. Mobile phone applications are a typical method used to access the technology platform and connect the consumers and suppliers.

As an economic model, the access economy suggests that "access" to goods and services may become more desirable than "ownership" of them. Steve Denning notes:

The third thing that the Internet did was social. It created a generation of people who began doing something that cut to the heart of the way society has been organized for several hundred years. These people—mainly young—began preferring access to ownership. Instead of planning their lives on the premise of acquiring and owning more private property, this new generation began finding meaning and satisfaction in having access to things and interacting with other people in the process.

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Wikipedia