Carlsberg Foundation Young Researcher Fellowship Awarded to Associate Professor Tobias Schäfers

The Carlsberg Foundation has awarded a Young Researcher Fellowship grant of DKK 3,380,349 to Associate Professor Tobias Schäfers. The grant will fund the research project “The Dark Side of the Sharing Economy” over a period of three years.

The idea of shared access has transformed various aspects of consumers’ lives, as reflected in mobility services (e.g., car and e-scooter sharing), fashion rentals, software-as-a-service, shared office space (e.g., WeWork), and different peer-to-peer offers (e.g., Airbnb, Uber). Such services are primarily considered to lead to positive societal outcomes, such as easier access to resources, a more efficient utilization of idle capacities, enhanced market recirculation of goods, or a greater sense of community. However, there have been increasing accounts of the dark side of the sharing economy, where access-based services have failed to deliver on the promise of enhancing the welfare of consumers, firms, and society. The awarded research project will combine economic and sociological perspectives to investigate negative externalities of the sharing economy and to develop recommendations on how potential drawbacks may be overcome.

The Carlsberg Foundation, one of the world’s oldest industrial foundations, supports excellent basic research at the highest international level in the field of natural science, social science, and the humanities. With the Young Researcher Fellowship, the foundation intends to enable the most outstanding newly appointed associate professors and tenure-track assistant professors with international experience to establish an independent research group or environment.

Associate Professor Tobias Schäfers