Journal of Cleaner Production 208 (2019) 1148e1158

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Value Co-creation for sustainable consumption and production in the

sharing economy in China
Yuge Ma a, Ke Rong b, c, *, Yining Luo b, Yong Wang b, Diana Mangalagiu a, d,
Thomas F. Thornton a
a
Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
b
Institute of Economics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
c
Institute for State-owned enterprises, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
d
Neoma Business School, France

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) has traditionally treated consumption and production as
Received 10 October 2017 separate domains of economic activities with different solutions for sustainability. In the emerging
Received in revised form sharing economy, consumption activities are more and more integrated into the production process of
24 September 2018
shared goods and services, which provides novel arenas for sustainability in cities. Increasingly, these
Accepted 11 October 2018
sharing business models are aiming to solve long-standing urban sustainability problems, such as
insufficient daily transport, and its problems of polluttion. In this article, we integrate theories of the
sharing economy, value co-creation and SCP to argue that the emergent forms of value co-creation be-
Keywords:
Sharing economy
tween consumers and sharing businesses provide new opportunities for SCP. We use two emergent and
Urban mobility representative sharing mobility businesses in China e a bike-sharing scheme called Mobike and an
Cleaner production electric-vehicle-sharing scheme called EVCARD e as case studies to analyze the sustainability potentials
Sustainable consumption and production of value co-creation. The social, behavioral, economic, and infrastructural obstacles encountered in
Collaborative governance realising such potentials are also identified. Based on these empirical results, we propose a framework to
China conceptualize the emerging patterns of value co-creation between governments, sharing business firms,
Bike-sharing and consumers in the sharing economy. We highlight the importance of understanding value co-creation
EV-Sharing
for development of SCP theory and practice to guide the evolving sharing economy.
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction advance sustainaility thinking and action in both production and

Since the Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP)
concept was introduced during the 1992 Rio World Summit on
Sustainable Development, significant progress has been made in
synergizing government regulations and industrial practices to-
wards the aim of ‘doing more and better with less’ (UNEP, 2010). In
2015, SCP became the cornerstone of the United Nations Sustain-
able Development Goal (SDG) 12: Ensure sustainable consumption
and production. SDG 12 defines SCP as ‘promoting resource and
energy efficiency, sustainable infrastructure, and providing access
to basic services, green and decent jobs and a better quality of life
for all.’ Indeed, SCP has become one of the driving global norms to
* Corresponding author. Institute of Economics, Tsinghua University, Beijing,
China.
E-mail address: r@tsinghua.edu.cn (K. Rong).
consumption arenas worldwide.
Within the SCP literature, Cleaner Production (CP) and Sus-
tainable Consumption (SC) are generally treated as two discrete
domains (Cohen and Munoz, 2016). This dichotomy tends to pro-
vide sustainable solutions by targeting producers and consumers
separately. Those solutions and goals are well elaborated in the 10-
year framework of programmes on SCP by SDG12. Generally, CP
focuses on reducing carbon emissions, and resource consumption,
during the extraction, production and affiliated processes leading
to goods or services (Barber, 2007). SC is mostly concerned with
reforming consumer behaviors and preferences in order to raise
their awareness of sustainability, finding ways of purchasing more
sustainably produced goods/services, as well as reducing material
consumption levels (O'Rourke and Lollo, 2015).
The dichotomy between CP and SC was developed for address-
ing sustainability problems in traditional products and services,
such as in food, energy, water, mobility and other systems.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.10.135
0959-6526/© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 Y. Ma et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 208 (2019) 1148e1158
However, over the last two decades, Information and Communi-
cation Technology (ICT) has changed dramatically the global supply
and demand chains in many industries and businesses, as well as
consumer behaviors, leading to a hybridization of consumption and
production processes (Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010). In many ICT-
enabled novel industries, the growing integration of production
and consumption has provided new avenues for sustainable solu-
tions, which the current dichotomy of the SCP scholarship does not
adequately address. Despite increasing awareness of the need to
connect the production and consumption sides of SCP among both
international governments and leading industries (UNEP, 2012), the
SCP scholarly literature to date has not effectively reflected this
change.
The hybridization of production and consumption is the most
salient characteristic of the new sharing economy (Cohen and
Munoz, 2016). The recent and fast-growing ICT-enabled sharing
economy uses technology to connect different stakeholders e in-
dividuals, communities, companies, governments e to create value
by sharing their excess capacities, or to create new capacities for
sharable products and services (AoM, 2016). Engines of the new
sharing economy can be disruptive and large scale digital sharing
businesses, such as Uber and Airbnb, but also include not-for-profit
and smaller scale sharing communities, such as Counchsurfing and
local carpooling clubs (Acquier et al., 2017). In any sharing system,
value co-creation between consumers and sharing firms/organi-
zations is essential, as without it the sharing of products and ser-
vices cannot function effectively (Lan et al., 2017). For example, the
Airbnb system cannot function if the consumer is not proactive in
matching with a host online, being respectful of the host's property
(i.e., behaving according to local norms and laws), giving a rating
and being rated by the host after the trip, etc. By contrast, in
traditional hospitality industries, customers can be a pure product
and service receiver/consumer, without such active and continuous
inputs into the SCP system.
Thus, the changing production and consumption relationships
and networks in the new digital platform-based sharing economy
require a new way of thinking about SCP. Cohen and Munoz (2016)
argue, in the context of the sharing economy, that SCP should be
treated as a continuum from sustainable consumption to sustain-
able production, to better understand the sharing businesses
models (BMs) that are situated along this hybrid spectrum. The
most disruptive and transformative sharing BMs often emerge in
cities, and in crucial urban development systems, such as transport,
housing and food. Therefore, the opportunities and challenges
brought about by the growing business and social practices of the
sharing economy are closely related to sustainability and are
making significant social and environmental impacts, both locally
and globally (Mclaren and Agyeman, 2015; Sundararajan 2016).
This paper responds to the limitations brought about by the
current dichotomy in the SCP literature by analysing the hybridi-
zation of the consumption and production processes, and by
addressing the sustainability potentials and solutions of the sharing
economy in the mobility sector in China. China is the world's largest
carbon emitter and energy consumer, but is determined to trans-
form itself into a low-carbon economy by radically advancing SCP in
major industries and big cities (Qi et al., 2016; Vergragt et al., 2016)
The success or failure of China's SCP and low-carbon transition will
have immense impact on global sustainability. Correlatively, in the
last five years, China has also experienced a rapid rise of the app-
based sharing economy, especially in the urban mobility sector.
This phenomenon has changed travel behaviors significantly, (re)
configured urban infrastructures, and (re)shaped people's imagi-
nations of cities (Ma et al., 2018). The Chinese case thus provides an
interesting platform to explore the fast-changing relationship of
SCP in the sharing economy in developing and transitioning
1149
countries.
Through an in-depth qualitative comparative investigation of
two representative green sharing mobility BMs e the free-floating
bike sharing (FFBS) scheme named Mobike and the electric-vehicle
(EV) sharing scheme called EVCARD e this paper identifies the
major mechanisms of value co-creation that are reflecting the hy-
bridization of the production and consumption processes and re-
lations in the sharing economy. The paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 reviews the sharing economy, SCP and value co-creation
and sustainability literature and analyzes the opportunity spaces
for social and environmental sustainability brought about by novel
forms of value co-creation in the green sharing mobility sector.
Section 3 introduces the research methods and data collected,
while section 4 presents the analysis of the case studies and find-
ings, and identifies the key obstacles in realizing such sustainability
potentials in the current socio-economic-infrastructural system of
Chinese cities. The discussion in section 5, building on a critical
analysis of the empirical data, proposes a framework for the
collaborative production-consumption-regulation partnership, as a
way towards better SCP in the context of the sharing economy in
developing and transitioning countries. Section 6 provides the
conclusions and limitations of the study.
2. Theoretical context
In this section, we critically assess the latest studies from the
sharing economy (2.1), SCP (2.2) and value co-creation and sus-
tainability (2.3), in order to lay out the scholarly context for the
empirical study.
2.1. Sharing economy: from consumer to consumer (C2C) to
business to consumer (B2C)
Sharing, as a social practice, is as old as human society (Belk,
2010). Yet today's Web 2.0 has enabled a new sharing economy,
signalled by globally influential sharing businesses like Uber and
Airbnb. At the same time, this new economy has become a highly
controversial phenomenon, due to its major economic and social
impacts (Belk, 2014). Acquier et al. (2017) argue that the modern
sharing economy is, essentially, a contested concept that contains
three organizing cores:
1. Access economy: a set of initiatives for sharing underutilized
assets to optimize their use, compared to the conventional
ownership-based economy.
2. Platform economy: a set of initiatives that mediate decentral-
ized exchanges among peers through digital platforms.
3. Community-based economy: initiatives coordinating through
non-contractual, non-hierarchical or non-monetized forms of
interaction the performance of work, participation in projects or
formation exchange relationships.
Yet it is almost impossible to reconcile all three organizing cores,
due to the constant tensions and paradoxes between them (Acquier
et al., 2017). Martin (2016) and Murillo et al. (2017) further posit
that unregulated commercial, political and technological forces,
embodied in the modern sharing economy, might lead us towards a
‘capitalist nightmare’ instead of a ‘sustainable future’ (See Fig. 1).
Although controversial, the sharing economy is, nevertheless,
growing fast in developing and transitioning countries like China,
where the trading volume of the sharing economy amounted to
about 4.92 trillion Yuan (0.72 trillion USD) in 2017, which was an
increase of 47.2% over the previous year, according to Chinese
government data (SIC, 2018). Moreover, the sharing economy in
China keeps changing and reinventing itself into innovative BMs,
1150 Y. Ma et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 208 (2019) 1148e1158
Fig. 1. Three organizing cores of the sharing economy.
Source: Acquier et al. (2017).
which are aimed at generating a commercial and social impact in
cities. There are two general types of BMs in the sharing economy.
One is Consumer to Consumer (C2C) or Peer-to-Peer sharing, where
individual participants are providers of shared products/services to
other users through digital platforms, like Uber, Airbnb and
TaskRabbit. The other is Business to Consumer (B2C) sharing, where
firms are the major providers of shared products/services for
registered users, such as Zipcar and most of the bike-sharing sys-
tems. Many studies have focused on the C2C model, characterized
by the collaborative consumption of excess capacity among peers
(Botsman and Rogers, 2011). The tension between the C2C model's
peer-to-peer sharing culture (Access economy and Community-
based economy) and the capitalist force for market expansion
and efficient technological power for centralizing big data collec-
tion and algorithm-based management (Platform economy), is
increasingly studied in the socio-technical transition (Martin, 2016;
Martin and Upham, 2016; Cockayne, 2016) and sociological litera-
ture (Srnicek, 2016; Standing, 2016; Schor, 2017; Ravenelle, 2017),
and business and organization studies (Dreyer et al., 2017; Mair and
€m, 2017). In contrast, limited
Reischauer, 2017; Laurell and Sandstro
research has addressed the B2C's BMs, and some authors have
criticized the fact that the B2C model is de-facto a rental economy
and hence should not be called a ‘sharing economy’ (Frenken and
Schor, 2017).
The B2C model is increasingly important to the sharing econ-
omy, especially in service areas where stability and the quality of
supplies are fundamental for business success, such as transport
and accommodation. The C2C model shares the excess capacities of
individuals and organizations, so it is a form of sharing based on
affluence (i.e. sharing the extra capacity of private cars where car
ownership is relatively high). But in many developing countries, as
well as remote areas in developed countries, resources are scarce
(i.e. in 2015, car ownership in China is 12.50% 1 against 84.15% in the
1
http://www.mps.gov.cn/n2255040/n4908728/c5595634/content.html
data.stats.gov.cn/easyquery.htm?cn¼C01.
US 2). Therefore, new capacities need to be generated in the first
place to provide adequate social services such as transport. The B2C
sharing economy model generates such new capacities in the form
of shareable products and services (access-based consumption) in
contrast to ownership-oriented goods that are produced and
exchanged in the traditional market economy. Also, to ensure stable
and high-quality shared products/services across a range of
geographic and business environments, C2C sharing companies are
partially or completely adopting the B2C model, since they realized
it was rather difficult to enforce rules on voluntary-based peer-to-
peer participation in the C2C model (i.e., it is unpredictable when
and to what level these individuals are willing to share their
excessive capacities). For example, the C2C ridesharing giant Uber
has been in active conversations with several state governments in
the US to provide reliable and affordable shared-rides for com-
muters to go to local train stations, where public transport is not
cost-effective due to low population density or insufficient public
funds.3
In China, after an initial introduction (2012-16) of the C2C
sharing BMs such as Didi (the Chinese Uber-like company which
merged with Uber's China operation in August 2016), the sharing
economy has been rapidly shifting to the B2C model (Rong and
Wang, 2017). In addition, the B2C model has been aligning itself
with the sustainable goals of cities to contribute to greener and
more affordable transport, through EV-sharing and bike-sharing
schemes, as well as minibuses (Ma et al., 2018; Cohen and
Kietzmann, 2014). Since this special issue is concerned with the
latest industrial and commercial transitions in developing coun-
tries relating to SCP, we focus our analysis on the new and green
B2C sharing BMs in the urban mobility sector of China. The next
section elaborates on the contribution of the B2C sharing economy
to SCP.
2.2. B2C sharing economy and SCP
The sharing economy is not inherently sustainable, yet it pro-
vides huge sustainability potentials that can be realised within
adequate social, economic, and political environments (OneEarth,
2015). From a Product Service System (PSS) perspective, Retamal
(2017) identified six criteria that can be applied in assessing the
sustainable impact of B2C sharing BMs: 1) using durable, quality
goods; 2) intensifying use of goods; 3) enabling repair, take back
and recycling of goods; 4) ensuring rental replaces purchase; 5)
minimising transport and disposable packaging of goods; 6)
reducing private vehicle kilometres travelled. Through case studies
in developing country cities in Southeast Asia, Retamal (2017)
found that the realization of the sustainable potentials in B2C
sharing systems depends on market conditions and socio-
economic relationships in the local context, and urged for effec-
tive policy interventions to help facilitate SCP in the sharing
economy.
Drawing on the recent development of the sharing economy in
China, Rong and Wang (2017) focused on the value chain, and
showed that the B2C sharing BM (referred to as ‘Sharing Economy
2.0’ in their study) may contribute to general SCP in three crucial
market constructs - production, marketing and consumption:
2
https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_
transportation_statistics/index.html https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/
number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/ https://www.census.gov/
programs-surveys/popest.html.
3
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/uber-has-proposed-the-state-
http:// government-help-it-subside-rides-to-train-stations-rather-then-build-more-
commuter-carparks/news-story/eb117643f7ca7619ecbc1f8341f26779.
 Y. Ma et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 208 (2019) 1148e1158
1. Production: the B2C sharing BM can better realize the circular
economy principle in lowering the carbon footprint of the
shared products and services by higher quality, and durability
and lower resource consumption, during the value creation
process (Ueda et al., 2009). In the context of resource scarcity,
B2C sharing schemes may help to generate new capacities
needed for delivering sufficient services through cleaner pro-
duction (CP), such as a better quality of shared bikes that can be
used for longer periods compared to traditional ones. The B2C
sharing BM helps to share the higher cost incurred in improving
quality and durability, giving higher incentives to producers to
invest in CP.
2. Marketing: the B2C sharing BM replaces traditionally marketed
products with PSS, in which a consumer's needs can be fulfilled
through the provision of targeted and more dematerialized
services (Mont, 2002; Vargo and Lusch, 2010). This change of the
product and service structure also reduces the pressure on
marketing and distribution, because the shared services and
products can reach the consumers more directly, lowering
resource consumption during the process (Annarelli et al., 2016,
Manzini, 2001). In addition, digital platform, widely deployed in
the B2C sharing economy, provides the technological foundation
for a more efficient resource use during the marketing process.
3. Consumption: the B2C sharing BM may increase the uses-to-
lifespan ratio of the product or service by sharing with multi-
ple people at different times, and maximizing its functionalities
through collaborative consumption (Daunoriene_ et al., 2015). It
may also fulfill a real need, such as the daily transport of con-
sumers with access-based consumption compared to the pre-
vious ownership-based model, reducing overall resource
consumption to meet the same level of demand (Jaeger-Erben
et al., 2015). But there is also a risk that the cheaper price of
collaborative consumption may increase demand (Parguel et al.,
2017).
To summarize, through restructuring the value chain and
adopting PSS constructs, the B2C sharing economy makes both
direct and indirect contributions to SCP and general sustainability
(See Fig. 2). While green manufacturing technology traditionally
has been considered a driver of cleaner production (Kong et al.,
2016; Rehman et al., 2016; Thurner and Roud, 2016; Kohtala,
2015), in the sharing economy the circular value chain capitalizes
on multiple domains in realizing SCP (Zhao et al., 2017; Wu and Zhi,
2016). In certain areas, the B2C sharing economy is proactively
promoting low-carbon solutions in cities, such as green transport in
the form of bike-sharing and EV-sharing. Indirectly, the disruptive
change brought about by the B2C sharing businesses in green
transport in Chinese cities has accelerated a dynamic societal
process of adaption, learning and action towards sustainability
through multi-stakeholder interactions addressing the challenges
and opportunities of this innovative BM (Hira, 2017; TUPDI, 2017).
Fig. 2. B2C sharing economy and SCP.
1151
2.3. SCP and value co-creation in the B2C sharing economy
To realise the sustainable potentials of the B2C sharing business,
a deep understanding of the changing socio-economic relation-
ships happening in the system and their implications for SCP is
essential (Fuchs and Lorek, 2005; Lorek and Spangenberg, 2014;
Akenji, 2014; Vieira and Amaral, 2016).
In a recent review, Geels et al. (2015) frame the current SCP
literature as a reformist - revolutionary dichotomy. On the one
hand, the orthodoxical ‘reformist’ position focuses on firms pur-
suing eco-innovations and consumers buying eco-efficient prod-
ucts. This position has developed away from the dominant focus on
pollution control and green products to also includie consumption
behaviors that underpin the resource intensity society (Clark, 2007;
Berg and Hukkinen, 2011). In parallel, there is the second ‘revolu-
tionary’ position that presents a radical critique of the mainstream
ideas, urging for the replacement of capitalism, materialism and
consumerism with frugality, self-sufficiency and localism (Webb,
2012). Geels et al. (2015) argued that both positions are problem-
atic: the former's limited potential is in facing the issues of climate
change, and the latter's is in its political unpalability. Instead, by
integrating the muli-level perspective (MLP) from sociotechnical
studies into SCP scholarships, they proposed a ‘reconfiguration’
position that focuses on the transitions in socio-technical systems
and daily life practices towards SCP, as a way to go beyond the di-
chotomy and to offer more sustainability potentials for SCP
research.
While the ‘reconfiguration’ position helps to broaden the
analytical angles of SCP literature from individual firms and con-
sumers to industries and societies (Geels et al., 2015), the inherent
limitation of MLP results in its insufficient attention to the
emerging socio-economic and political relationships in today's fast-
changing economies (Sorrell, 2017). In the context of the B2C
sharing economy, shared products and services are more and more
co-produced by producers and consumers together, blurring the
boundaries between consumers and firms, consumers and peers,
and between consumers and labour (individual producers) (Joore
and Brezet, 2015). This change is deeply social and political,
because it reflects not only a reconfiguration of the general socio-
technical systems, but also a restructuring of social and economic
actors, relationships, networks and cognitions (Lan et al., 2017).
Ritzer (2014, 2015) used the concept of ‘prosumption’ to
describe this structural change, In the recent decade, ICT, especially
smartphone-based Apps, had increased the level of consumer
involvement in the production process and relations in today's
sharing economy, while it has also decreased its cost (Rayna, 2008).
Taking a step further, Rayna and Striukova (2016) conceptualized
the structural hybridization between consumption and production
processes and roles as ‘value co-creation’. The concept of value co-
creation was originally developed by management and organiza-
tion scholars, which mainly focuses on enhancing a cooperative
strategy (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004) and consumer experi-
ence (Vargo and Lusch, 2004) through supporting and leveraging
the co-production process between consumers and firms. It
particularly emphasized a mutual learning process between con-
sumers and firms in order to co-create mutually desired values
(Payne et al., 2008). We consider the concept of value co-creation as
a novel starting point to go beyond the SCP literature's ‘reformist-
revolutionary dichotomy’ at a more social-cognitive level (i.e. the
learning process as well as relationship and role changes)
compared to the ‘reconfiguration position’ suggested by Geels et al.
(2015).
The sharing economy requires consumers to perform value co-
creation via multiple roles and duties, such as sharing their idle
goods and spare capacities to serve other consumers, or helping to
1152 Y. Ma et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 208 (2019) 1148e1158
maintain a sharing environment (Eden, 2015). Some researchers
have criticized the value co-creation paradigm, as being exploit-
ative of consumers, since there are not enough rewards provided by
firms in return for consumers' contributions (Bardhi and Eckhardt,
2012; Eckhardt and Bardhi, 2015; Belk, 2014). While this is possible
in some cases, in the B2C sharing BMs, consumers' contributions
are fundamental for any sharing activity to happen (Hertler and
Tasso, 2015, Schaefers et al., 2016a,b)). Consumers in B2C sharing
models choose to use the service themselves, and so participate in
value co-creation with the firm and other customers, voluntarily,
with various motivations and intentions (Barnes and Mattsson,
2017; Bo € cker and Meelen, 2017).
Indeed, value co-creation, between sharing participants and
firms, is the central action field transforming the previously distinct
production and consumption domains towards realising SCP goals
(Frei, 2005; Firnkorn and Müller, 2011; Habibi et al., 2016). How-
ever, there are multiple obstacles encountered during the value co-
creation processes in the B2C sharing systems that obscure its
sustainability potential (Lan et al., 2017), especially the massive
user and non-user misbehavior due to a lack of ownership and
social supervision (Schaefers et al., 2016a,b). Our study will address
this understudied area through an in-depth qualitative analysis of
two cases (4.1), which is aiming to map out the political, economic
and ethical gaps faced in value co-creation towards SCP in China's
fast developing sharing mobility sector (Section 4.2). We will also
discuss how to achieve urban sustainability through enhancing
value co-creation in the sharing economy (Section 5).
3. Research methods and data
Drawing on the literature of case study research and qualitative
methods (Flyvbjerg, 2006), we adopt an iterative theory building
from case study approach (Eisenhardt, 1989; Glaser, 1992) using
first and secondary data from the newly emerged sharing mobility
sector in Shanghai and Beijing.
In this part, we will introduce our research design, including
data collection, case selection and interview protocol.
In terms of the data collection, we use the strategy of data
triangulation (Yin, 2008) by collecting data from three source:
1) 50 stakeholders' interviews as the primary data in this research,
from June 2016 to August 2017: such in-depth interviews were
conducted with representative actors in the B2C sharing busi-
ness, primarily with 10 interviewee from Mobike and 9 inter-
viewee from EVCARD in Shanghai and Beijing. The actors
include co-founders and management teams of the selected
companies. In terms of the rest interviewee, we interview active
user groups and clubs, policy makers in the transport-related
sections of municipal administrative and regulative bodies,
government and university think tanks specialising in SCP, as
well as management and strategy team in major automobility
companies in Shanghai and Beijing. The choice of the in-
terviewees was grounded in the principle that all stakeholders
that have a substantive function in the B2C sharing mobility
business concerning SCP need to be considered.
2) besides, we do the observation from policy forum and stake-
holder workshops, where more than 20 stakeholders attended
and discuss the collaborative governance of SCP in the B2C
sharing. These activities we regarded as the group discuss,
generated more understanding of SCP in the sharing economy.
3) thirdly, the secondary data as the supportive data were collected
such as open access company information, legislative acts, plans
of local development, business and media reports. All of these
secondary data were utilized for gaining a holistic perspective of
the cases on the one hand, and for triangulating informants'
statements and researchers' observations from workshops and
forums, on the other.
In terms of the case selection, the reasons we selected these two
cases are: firstly, those two cases (Mobike and EVCARD) are two of
most representatives of the B2C sharing business model in China;
secondly, the SCP processes and the relationships to realize the
value co-creation we intend to analyse are significant in the cases,
which could demonstrate such interaction very much.
Regarding to the interview protocol, we have the following
rules: 1) we will collect the data from the view of processes and
obstacles encountered in value co-creation; (2) the data of the
changing socio-economic networks and relationships emerged and
its impact on value co-creation will also be collected; and (3) we
will also observe and record the impact of value co-creation on SCP
in the B2C sharing business.
4. Case analysis and findings
Low-carbon transport is the only key contributor to urban CO2
emissions that is still growing today, while the other two e building
and industry e have been steadily declining in large cities (UN-
Habitat, 2016). Value co-creation is key in maintaining a sustain-
able and well-functioning public transport system (Gebauer et al.,
2010). Recent developments of B2C sharing BMs have provided
important support to public transport systems in terms of using
bike-sharing to solve the ‘last mile’ transport problem, and EV-
sharing to provide an alternative and green commute (Cohen and
Kietzmann, 2014). Novel patterns of value co-creation have
emerged from the new practice of those B2C sharing BMs, opening
new arenas to facilitate SCP. In this section, we analyze two typical
and important B2C sharing cases e Mobike and EVCARD e to
ascertain the value of co-creation processes and their potentials for
sustainability in the sharing economy.
Mobike, a private start-up founded in Shanghai in April 2016,
made a breakthrough in China by introducing innovative free-
floating bike sharing (FFBS) services to customers. The former
station-based bike sharing programs, promoted by local govern-
ments, failed to have a significant impact on changing citizens'
travel behaviors in China (Zhang et al., 2015). In contrast, the
innovative FFBS, featuring convenient access and transaction, has
proved to be an effective solution for daily commuters by devel-
oping a sustainable inter-modal public transportation system of
subway plus bike, when compared to the use of private cars and
taxies (Wu and Xue, 2017).
EVCARD is China's first EV sharing platform, established in
Shanghai in 2015 as part of the national strategy of promoting EV
and low-carbon transport. EVCARD is a municipal government-
owned enterprise and provides a smart EV rental service for
registered users at a price of 15 yuan (US$2.4) for the first 30 min,
and then 0.5 yuan for each additional minute, with a total daily cap
of 180 Yuan. As of February 2018, EVCARD was the largest EV-
sharing company in China serving around 1 million registered
users with over 2000 stations and 8000 EVs in Shanghai.
Our analysis will first map out the value co-creation processes
and obstacles in the two cases (4.1), and then summarize their
challenges in realising SCP (4.2).
4.1. Mapping value co-creation processes and obstacles in low-
carbon mobility B2C sharing models
Value co-creation between users (consumers) and firms (pro-
ducers) performance is required at every step of the usage process,
and thus is crucial for the sharing system's functioning.
 Y. Ma et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 208 (2019) 1148e1158 1153

Table 1
Value co-creation in Mobike.

Step 1: Locating and finding a Step 2: Placing and unlocking a Step 3: Riding Step 4: Returning and
bike bike Reporting

Value co- Producer Operation and maintenance & Support system (smart lock) Obtaining transportation Updating and managing the PSS
creation GPS data
Consumer The last user's proper parking; User A's unlocking the bike User A's consumption User A's proper parking
User A's
searching & locating
Roles in the Service provider The company; the last user; The company; User A The company The company; User A
service User A
Service obtainer User A; non-user citizens User A; non-user citizens User A Users; The company; non-user
citizens
Sustainability Problem 1 Broken bikes out of service Defective app Illegal riding Illegal parking
challenge Problem 2 Orderlessness due to over Defective lock Traffic order affected Stealing or hidding bikes for
competition self-use
Defective lock

In the case of Mobike, as shown in Table 1, the first step of using
FFBS is the user (User A) finding a nearby bike by using the GPS
services offered on the mobile app. The provision of available bikes
relies not only on the management of the firm, but also on the
performance of the previous user, since the last user must park the
bike in public parking spaces, without damage or obstruction, so
that the next user can access it. In this context, the collaboration
between the company, the last user and the next user (and, more
passively, the custodian of public spaces used in the scheme) is
naturally formed for the efficacious circulation of the shared bikes,
even though the whole process is self-service. After successfully
locating a bike, in the second step, the user unlocks it by scanning
the QR code on the bike using the mobile app. Compared to
traditional bike rental systems, the QR code-enabled smart lock is
easier to be disrupted if a user decides to engage in vandalism, such
as destroying the QR code displayed on the bike (e.g., by defacing it,
as in Fig. 3, in contrast to cutting the physical lock of a traditional
bike, which is much more difficult to do). The FFBS cannot function
should such vandalism occur, making the system especially
vulnerable to misbehavior. In the third step, when riding a bike,
misbehavior can happen when some users ride the bike on the
wrong side of the road, carry children or heavy and/or over-sized
Fig. 3. Example of destroyed QR code.
luggage on the bike, which may cause safety issues on the one
hand, and damage to the bike on the other. One of the sustainable
benefits of B2C shared goods and services is the higher durability
that reduces wastes and emissions over the product's lifetime.
However, the lack of ownership in the access-based economy may
accentuate user negligence and misbehavior, thus shortening the
life span of shared bikes, and hindering the sustainable potential of
this innovative BM. After riding, in the fourth and last step, the user
has the responsibility to park the bike within legal parking areas for
the next user to access the bike easily.
Like Mobike, EVCARD also requires users to actively participate
in the co-creation of its sustainable value e green transport e at
every step of usage. As shown in Table 2, first, the user needs to find
an available EV nearby, check its remaining battery, and book it, all
via the app. Secondly, the user goes to the nearby station to claim
the booked car. EVCARD relies on its own self-service rental sta-
tions to charge EVs while not in service, because charging facilities
are still scarce in Chinese cities. Thirdly, during the driving process,
a user needs to drive properly to ensure the vehicle maintains its
operating capacity. Some users tend to manipulate the rule in order
to gain more personal benefits, at the risk of violating the sharing
system's rules and other people's welfare. For example, interview
data shows that some users are professional drivers who take out
cars from EVCARD to drive drunk people home at night in order to
earn a profit. Since the EV-sharing system was designed as a green
transport mode for daily commuters' own use rather than for taxi
services, such behavior may damage the product and service in
ways that shorten its life span, thus compromising the sharing
system's environmental and social sustainability. After the trip, to
complete the value co-creation process, consumers need to clean
the car used before returning it. Misbehaviors, such as leaving
rubbish or deliberately damaging the car, were frequently reported
by the next user in the EVCARD user club's social media during its
early stages. Such behaviors can halt the next transaction (i.e. the
next user refuses to rent the EV once he/she detects the issue).
Furthermore, the return step also includes users recharging the car.
During this process, the user, who has completed her own trip, is
required to take up the role of a service provider by recharging the
EV for the next user.
Preventing a user's negative performance is more challenging in
the B2C sharing BM like EVCARD, when compared to the traditional
business environment when a rider/driver uses his/her own
vehicle. Lack of incentives (access-based instead of ownership-
based consumption), absence of supervision, weak sense of re-
sponsibility, difficulties in finding a legal parking space and other
factors may all contribute to misbehaviors in the form of illegal
parking and/or riding, damaging or hiding the vehicles deliberately.
1154 Y. Ma et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 208 (2019) 1148e1158
Table 2
Value co-creation in EVCARD.
Step 1: Reserving a car
Value co-creation Producer Rental system & station
management
Consumer User A reserving a car with
enough range
Roles in the service Service provider The company; the last user;
User A
Service obtainer User A
Sustainability challenge Problem 1 Car shortage in the nearby
station
Problem 2 Defective app
This risk is conceptualized as ‘what is yours is mine’ by Slee (2015),
against the utopian view of the collaborative consumption - ‘what
is mine is yours’ - originally proposed by Botsman and Rogers
(2011). In reaction to this frequent misbehavior, both Mobike and
EVCARD issued a credit-scoring policy to punish misbehavior and
to incentivize consumers help detect and prevent other people's
misbehavior. A user who enhances the sharing system by reporting
broken vehicles or others' violation of the rules earns credits, while
those who abuse the rules are punished by a reduction of their
credit scores. The rental price is adjusted dynamically according to
the score. The credit-scoring system facilitates users' self-
regulation and provides a framework of value co-creation in
maintaining the sharing system between consumers and pro-
ducers. The drawback is that it may only be effective to price-
sensitive users, and the firm has exclusive control over the pric-
ing of incentives and disincentives in the credit scoring economy.
In addition to the value co-creation between consumers and
firms, the collaboration between firms and governments, as well as
society (non-user citizens), is also important to fulfill the sustain-
able potential of the B2C sharing economy. For instance, to ensure
accessible services to mass customers and to gain more of a market
share, FFBS start-ups, encouraged by their venture capitalist sup-
porters, have been competing fiercely in this emerging marketplace
through placing huge numbers of bikes into the city. The unrea-
sonable flooding of shared bikes has led to piles of bikes occupying
public spaces, a typical tragedy of commons that also violates SCP
and circular economy principles through massive oversupply. There
were more than 30 FFBS companies providing more than 16 million
bikes in China at the peak time 4; a large part of which are not well
deployed and utilized. The oversupply produced nearly 300,000
tons of waste of scrap metal, affecting environmental sustainability
significantly.5
4.2. Challenges of realizing SCP through value co-creation in the
B2C sharing economy
The B2C sharing economy in the mobility sector has brought
significant opportunity spaces for urban sustainability by promot-
ing biking and EV via convenient and affordable shared services. In
the year of 2016, the total number of car journeys, in the 50 cities
where Mobike operates, fell by 3% since the bike sharing programs
were launched, which helped to reduce air pollution, fossil fuel
consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in cities (TUPDI, 2017).
The same report also finds that 51% of Mobikes' bikes are used near
subway stations in Shanghai, a strong indicator that this new model
4 7
http://www.mot.gov.cn/jiaotongyaowen/201708/t20170831_2910604.html.
5
http://www.infzm.com/content/125129.
Step 2: Claiming the car Step 3: Driving Step 4: Return and charging
Support system (GPS & smart Tracking trip & Checking & maintenance
lock) remaining range
User A finding the station and User A0 driving User As cleaning, return
claiming the car and charging
The company; User A The company The company; User A
User A User A; non-user Users; The company; non-
citizens user citizens
Difficulties in finding the Difficulties in starting Lack of parking spaces
station the car up nearby
Defective smart-card Insufficient range of EV Return without charging or
cleaning
of transportation, provided by B2C sharing business, effectively
promoted the co-benefit use of the subway, complemented by
biking for ‘the last mile’, and is thus further reducing GHG emis-
sions when compared to driving. The same happens for EV-sharing:
according to Chinese government data, in the first half of 2017, the
total number of shared cars, provided by 40 Chinese car sharing
enterprises, reached 40,000, more than 95% of which are new en-
ergy vehicles.6
However, the disruptive rise of the B2C sharing economy has
posed several challenges for its promises of sustainability. As our
comparative case mapping shows, value co-creation between
consumers and producers is required in every step of the B2C
sharing process, which becomes a crucial force to realize the sus-
tainable potentials (green transport in the present cases) of this
innovative BM. In some cases, the value co-creation field extends
beyond the sharing firm and users into the wider society, requiring
positive and active support from non-user citizens and govern-
ments to enable sustainability in the sharing economy. However,
the empirical data also show that user as well as non-user misbe-
havior quite often affects the value co-creation process. In the long
run, social trust, one of the bases of the sharing economy (Botsman,
2017; Celata et al., 2017), might be irreversibly harmed should firms
and governments fail to discourage misbehavior and encourage
positive value co-creation user behaviors. Preventing misbehavior
and encouraging positive behaviors from users and the wider so-
ciety is an urgent task that companies and governments both face.
Apart from the social and behavioral obstacles, there were also
economic and infrastructural factors and the tragedy-of-the com-
mons misuses of public spaces, which were found to be disenabling
the value co-creation process towards sustainability in the B2C
sharing systems. Economically, the B2C sharing companies and
their supporting venture capitalists believe in a winner-takes-all
model (Srnicek, 2016; Murillo et al., 2017; Munoz and Cohen,
2017; Martin et al., 2017) in which, after the initial market suc-
cess, companies start to prioritize rapid market expansion over
sustainability objectives.7 Apart from oversupply overwhelming
the public spaces, the fierce market competition also poses the risk
of ‘bad money driving out good’, because companies using poorer
quality bikes gain a short-run advantage compared to those which
provide longer durability yet more expensive ones. Oversupply, and
poor quality issues with using shared goods, offer negative in-
centives for consumers to participate in value co-creation towards
sustainability. On the contrary, EVCARD, thanks to its government
background, and higher market entry requirements of EV-sharing
6
http://www.mot.gov.cn/jiaotongyaowen/201708/t20170808_2805806.html.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/29/mobike-founder-says-it-is-more-
interested-in-expansion-than-profits.html.
 Y. Ma et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 208 (2019) 1148e1158 1155

compared to bike-sharing, naturally gained a monopoly status in

Shanghai, preventing over-competition and over-supply, more
effectively. Yet it also has encountered problems when negotiating
with private parties for parking and charging facilities, which is
challenging the future economic and social sustainability of this
BM.
In terms of infrastructure, the cities' master plans did not fore-
see the dramatic rise of the B2C sharing BM that is promoting
biking and EV-sharing, so the physical infrastructure, as well as the
institutional settings, were not well prepared enough to nurture
the new models of green transport. Infrastructure, such as sufficient
bikes lanes and EV charging facilities, take time to plan, negotiate
and develop. The process often takes years if not decades (Lin,
2001). While the B2C sharing BM brought more than a million
shared bikes into the city within 18 months, putting tremendous
pressure on infrastructure, government, and users. One of the
reasons for user misbehaviors was the lack of infrastructure to
support benign behaviors. For instance, where there is no bike lane
available, Mobike riders must risk riding in the pedestrian areas or Fig. 4. Changing roles of government, producer and consumer.
car lanes. Within this context, the inadequate infrastructure poses a
serious challenge for consumers to participate in a positive value
co-creation process due to lack of alternatives. In the case of EV- are indeed required by the municipal government to share such
sharing, the general lack of charging facilities in Chinese cities data to help the government better manage urban traffic.
makes private EV owners often take advantage of the EV-sharing  Consumers as co-regulators: as the empirical data shows, the
stations to charge their own electric cars.8 It discourages value accumulation of consumer misbehaviors in the B2C sharing
co-creation from the EV sharing scheme users, because such a sit- system may cause a serious dysfunction in the sharing process
uation requires them to deal with complex situations involving and in public spaces (i.e. massive illegal parking and riding),
arguing and negotiating with strangers, which significantly affects threatening urban sustainability. Consumers' active value co-
their own convenience. creation behaviors, such as helping the system detect and pre-
vent misbehavior through reporting, are already contributing
significantly to the maintenance of the bike-sharing systems
(Lan et al., 2017). In this context, consumers not only contribute
5. Discussion
to the firms' sustainable value creation process, but also play
part of the government's role in regulating public spaces and
The social, behavioral, economic and infrastructural obstacles
safeguarding social sustainability, which arguably goes beyond
encountered in the value co-creation processes of the B2C green
the sustainable contribution of collaborative consumption and
mobility BMs require new ways of thinking about SCP. Our case
risks putting too much responsibility on users (Barnes and
study findings may contribute to the future theoretical develop-
Mattsson, 2016).
ment of SCP in the context of developing countries in two ways.
First, the SCP literature needs not only to acknowledge the
Second, apart from producers and consumers cultivating new
blurring boundaries between production and consumption in the
arenas of collaboration within urban governance, governments are
emerging sharing economy (Cohen and Munoz, 2016), but also to
also playing the role of co-producers and co-consumers in novel
pay attention to the changing roles and relations between producer,
ways in the B2C sharing economy:
consumer and governments during the restructuring process
brought about by the digital sharing economy. As Fig. 4 shows, in
 Governments as co-producers: government's policy and infra-
contrast to the conventional model, where government regulates
structure support is crucial for the B2C sharing BM to survive
cleaner production activities while encouraging consumers to
and thrive. In the case of EVCARD, the government was behind
purchase sustainably produced goods in the market place in the
the initial business idea of using the B2C sharing model to
B2C sharing environment, both producers and consumers are
promote EVs. Without the strong and continuous government
sharing the regulatory responsibilities during the value co-creation
support in terms of granting car licenses, subsidizing EV pur-
process to promote sustainability:
chase and allocating parking resources, the capital-intensive EV
sharing BMs could not have taken off so vastly and smoothly in
 Producers as co-regulators: since B2C sharing businesses are
China. In the case of Mobike, the government is the key player in
providing green transport that may enable better public trans-
building a sustainable biking environment by providing
port, their proper functioning becomes a part of the city's
adequate, enforceable, road and parking resources. That is to say,
mobility infrastructure. The firms' management of shared bikes
the government is a key supplier and insurer of the enabling
and EVs is vital in maintaining order of a city's scarce road and
environment for the B2C sharing models, and therefore, a de-
parking resources. Producers, in this way, play part of the role
facto co-producer in the value chain of green transport.
that was previously performed by the government. In addition,
 Governments as co-consumers: indeed, the government is among
using the big data platforms, B2C sharing firms can detect in-
the first to adopt the green and new transport mode provided by
dividual law violations (i.e. illegal car riding and car accidents)
the B2C sharing economy; setting an example for individual
much easier than governments. Some of the car-sharing firms
consumers to follow. Especially in the case of EVCARD, the first
mass adoption of the innovative EV-sharing system is the
8 Shanghai government's civil servant system, which replaced its
https://top.sina.cn/zx/2017-07-11/tnews-ifyhwehx5698415.d.html?
cre¼wappage&mod¼r&loc¼2&r¼9&doct¼0&rfunc¼0&none. previous official chauffeured car system with the EVCARD
1156 Y. Ma et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 208 (2019) 1148e1158
service. Considering that in China, official chauffeured cars are
an important contributor to traffic and pollution because their
quantity and type of emissions are not regulated and are under-
reported, this action sent a strong signal to society to encourage
the adoption of EV-sharing. The government contributes to the
value co-creation towards sustainable transport as a pioneer
consumer, in its interactions with other institutional and indi-
vidual consumers.
Understanding the changing socio-economic relationships,
during the value chain reconfiguration in the sharing economy,
leads to reshaping the SCP framework, which is facing pressing
challenges to realise the significant sustainable potentials provided
by the BM innovation of the B2C sharing economy, especially in the
context of resource scarcity in developing countries. Compared to
the traditional SCP model that regards sustainable consumption
and production as separate constructs with separate solutions, our
findings highlight the importance of integrating CP and SC in the
SCP framework during the rapidly restructuring value chains in
today's business world (Pitelis, 2009). This integrated view,
focusing on realising sustainability through enhancing value co-
creation, prepares the foundation for SCP studies to go beyond
the conventional SCP solutions, which target producers, consumers
and governments as autonomous actors. Instead, the new yet
disruptive BMs, as well as the specific social and political enabling
environment for value co-creation towards sustainability, requires
a more holistic and integrative perspective of SCP that helps
reconfigure emergent consumer-producer-government partner-
ships towards that end.
Our empirical analysis also indicates the pressing issue about
how to take the disruptive potential of sharing economy in-
novations towards both sustainability and equitability, in an envi-
ronment that is presently characterized by winner-take-all and
short-term market capture strategies designed for monopoly
rather than shared business spaces. Yet these disruptive in-
novations create new niches and micro-environments as well.
Currently the sharing economy business models rarely support a
triple bottom line, and it is likely that they will not unless firmly
regulated by both government and consumers. While the socio-
technical transitions theory has yielded insights into the stages of
development among technical innovations (Hodson et al., 2017;
Geels et al., 2016), it has less to offer concerning the radical orga-
nizational innovations and socio-economic relation change,
exhibited in the sharing economy. Compared to the ‘reconfigura-
tion position’ proposed by Geels et al. (2015), our framework, from
the value co-creation perspective, goes beyond the reformist-
revolutionary dichotomy of the SCP literature to a deeper level -
addressing a relational and role change between consumers, firms
and governments in the sharing economy, structurally. Building on
our study, the power dynamics and partnerships between these
three stakeholders in the evolution and stabilization of shared
economy social-ecological systems is a topic worthy of further
study.
6. Conclusion
This paper is among the first to address the changing consumer-
producer-government relations and processes that have emerged
from the fast developing B2C sharing economy in China from a
value co-creation's perspective. Its comparative qualitative case
studies of representative B2C sharing businesses contribute to an
original and timely analysis of this globally influential commercial
and social innovation in the context of developing and transitioning
countries.
Through a literature review of the sharing economy, SCP and
value co-creation, and supported by empirical evidence of the
green sharing mobility sector in China, we demonstrate that the
B2C sharing BM, which is currently under-studied by scholars of
both the sharing economy and SCP, provides a significant oppor-
tunity space for urban sustainability under resource scarcity. Facing
the increasing hybridization of consumption and production ac-
tivities, as well as the restructuring of value chains in the new
sharing economy, we provide a novel framework to understand the
reconfiguration of roles and relationships of key stakeholders
emphasizing their value co-creation mechanisms, which are
featured and conceptualized as ‘consumers and producers as co-
regulators’ and ‘governments as co-producers and co-consumers’.
Such an understanding prepares the ground for a more holistic and
integrated SCP theory and the development of practice concerning
the sharing economy.
7. Future research
Apart from unpacking the opportunities, our study also high-
lights the substantial challenges brought about by the B2C sharing
BMs that are hindering sustainability. We argue that new and dy-
namic coordination mechanisms of urban governance are required
to engender the emerging patterns of value co-creation towards a
triple bottom line (Elkington, 1997) vision of social, economic, and
environmental sustainability shared among all stakeholders in the
new sharing economy. The value co-creation and co-regulation
mechanism act as a beneficial linkage between government, pro-
ducer and consumer and more official institutions to enhance the
dialogues between them are imperative in future urban gover-
nance. This paper suggests a number of other further areas for the
study of SCP, the sharing economy and socio-technical studies that
will help to advance sustainability theories and practices in
developing and transitioning countries. This study is qualitative
and explorative in nature, but will benefit from future quantifiable
studies on the impact of the sharing economy on SCP (i.e. lifecycle
analysis) as well.
Acknowledgement
This research is supported by EU Horizon 2020 GREEN-WIN
Project (No.642018), the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (No. 71872098, 71834006), Beijing Excellent Talent training
Program, the research project （No.2018THUISOE07）of the insti-
tute for state-owned enterprises Tinghua University, ‘Tang Young
Scholar Awards’, Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research
Program No.2016THZWYY12.
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