Looking around the Liftshare office I could be forgiven for basing assumptions about wider society on my colleagues. We are from diverse social backgrounds and are as different as the people in a supermarket checkout queue. Some are straight out of school while others are grandparents. A few are young free and single, some are in relationships, some divorced and some married. We come from all over the world but some were born and bred just down the road. Some love our office slide and use it every day, whilst others have never been on it. One even sits on a gym ball instead of an office chair! But of course we have one conspicuous thing in common - we are all peer-to-peer sharers (although admittedly with varying degrees of dedication). Naturally we share cars, but we also share our desks, homes, clothes, time, gardens, storage units (the list goes on). We work within the sharing economy so we should be good at sharing, right? Well we weren’t all such enthusiastic sharers until we learnt of the benefits. So do we represent society as a whole? Do we live in a world of natural born sharers who need minimum persuasion to join the movement or selfish individualists devoted to owning whatever we need or want? And does the generation we were born into make a difference when it comes to our propensity to share?
Human after all
Founder of Liftshare, Ali Clabburn who was inspired to start the social enterprise because of the fun he had when car-sharing abroad, is certain that any apparent resistance to sharing is a short-term issue: “We need to cooperate to survive but the UK’s sharing economy is fighting against a tide of 50 years of marketing for individualism and the need to own things,” observes Ali. “Fundamentally we are sociable beings and as the European country whose workers put in the longest hours tens of thousands of commuters are already satisfying their inherent need for social interaction through car sharing.” But perhaps our embedded behaviours and more broadly, social norms, mean that sharing is a difficult thing to persuade the current generation of home-owners and commuters to do as a matter of course. Dr Emma Seppala, Associate Director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University, points out that whilst we believe the ‘norm’ is that we are all self-interested, in fact the opposite is true: “Data shows that compassion is innate – it’s our first instinct.” Dr Seppala gives an example: “In an economics study participants were given a certain amount of money and they were offered the choice to act fairly, so share the money with other participants, or keep it for themselves. Given just a few seconds to decide their first response was to share, but given a few more minutes to think about it most change their mind.” So by gravitating towards individualism, we are in fact fighting instinctive behaviour. But will this always be the case or will Gen Y (today’s teenagers and young adults) have more of a propensity to share given that they are more acutely aware of the negative impact of all-out consumerism?
Generations matter
Nadia Chernyak and Tamar Kushnir (Psychological Science, October 2013) suggest that if children are given the choice to share with someone else, then that can create a more lasting state of mind that leads them to continue sharing. In contrast to Gen X (most of whom were latchkey kids with both parents working) Gen Y was raised by the Baby Boomers. They've been taught to get along with their brothers and sisters, be team players and to compromise. Co-author of Generations, Inc.: From Boomers to Linksters, Meagan Johnson points out: “If Generation X is independent, Generation Y is interdependent. For them, hanging out in groups has taken the place of traditional dating. They go everywhere together and even apply for jobs together. It's almost a throwback to their parents' experiments in communal living back in the '60s. And they seem to have embraced the idea that sharing material goods is better than owning them.”
This sharing culture is exploding in the work place, with companies such as Google allowing employees to share and comment on what each other is doing in an open environment. They say: “We strive to maintain the open culture often associated with start-ups, in which everyone is a hands-on contributor and feels comfortable sharing ideas and opinions. [In weekly meetings] Googlers ask questions directly to Larry, Sergey and other execs about any number of company issues.”
Gone are traditional corporate silos in this global business where the average age of employees is just 29. Ali believes that the pendulum is swinging away from traditional measures of success, such as owning an impressive house or a garage full of fast cars: “The way we live now is unsustainable and we are already seeing the next generation doing things differently. Making close friendships with people they share with is normal in so many parts of the world and the UK is playing catch up at an unprecedented pace.”Guest post written by Emma Cook.
I manage the communications for Liftshare.com, the first car-sharing network in the UK, with the aim of bringing about a cultural shift in people’s travel habits. Changing behaviour to create a more sustainable future is my passion and prior to joining Liftshare I ran behaviour change campaigns throughout the UK and Eastern Europe for a global NGO. Photo credit: greekadman via photopincc