Responsibility and care in the collaborative economy

This paper explores moral responsibility in the collaborative economy using examples from the collaborative economy accommodation sector as the context to excavate key issues and challenges. The paper traverses difficult philosophical terrain in order to better understand the relationship between concepts such as ethics, responsibility and moral action in the collaborative economy. The traditional approach is for governments to adopt universal rules to determine who is responsible for what consequences and to prescribe remedies so that actors can ‘earn’ the claim of being responsible. However, the global and liquid nature of the collaborative economy operating across jurisdictions and the difficulty and lack of interest in implementing strict regulatory frameworks that contradict neoliberal free market ideology suggest that utilitarian and rule bound approaches to defining and apportioning responsibilities are unlikely. A care ethics approach to responsibility, that relies on articulating values, establishing emotional connections to place and people/communities, and that encourages public-private collaborative action towards a caring end is argued to be a potential way forward.