How does blockchain affect the established sharing economy services (SES)?

Abstract: In the last two decades, dominant business models in the economy have turned to aggregating the resources of people to provide services to consumers through a platform. Airbnb, Uber, and Amazon are a few examples in sharing economy services (SES) business employing this model. Blockchain is set to disrupt these giants by facilitating direct access between users and service providers in a secure and decentralized pattern, without a need for a trusted intermediary. This study aims to make contributions to the Information Systems (IS) field by researching the effect of blockchain based SES from a business model and trust perspective through an exploratory research. Findings indicate that although there are conceptual benefits claimed by blockchain based SES at this stage, they do not have immediate potential to disrupt established SES giants as the way they operate today. Based on this research, we suggest key factors in relation to value proposition, profit formula and trust relations which can guide blockchain based SES platforms to be disruptive in near future. Moreover, we urge researchers to further explore this research phenomenon by raising novel questions to provide more effective and sustainable solutions.