ABSTRACT
Driven by a rising awareness for sustainability on the level of society, the sharing economy is increasingly considered both as an element of the modern economy and innovation that is based on new technologies, new business models, and new ways of consumer-producer interaction. It offers abundant and prominent opportunities for entrepreneurship. In this chapter, we describe the sharing economy as a distinct type of digital entrepreneurship and give first insights into the unexplored topic of its impact on regional economic development.. Using Airbnb rental data for the tourist destination of Østfold, a peripheral region of southeastern Norway, we describe this type of digital entrepreneurship in the sharing economy as an alternative to traditional accommodation and link its growth to regional employment or unemployment. We present descriptive statistics and an empirical analysis and find that digital entrepreneurs associated with Airbnb are influenced by the prevalence of “traditional” accommodation and driven by unemployment in the region. We have also found an indication that these digital entrepreneurs in the region are opportunity driven rather than necessity. With this finding, we provide first ideas about this unexplored research avenue and evoke follow-up research questions.
