1 Proposal for the 2 nd IŶterdiscipliŶary IŶŶovatioŶ CoŶfereŶce ParticipatiŶg iŶ iŶŶovatioŶ, iŶŶovatiŶg iŶ participatioŶ ;Paris, Dec. ϮϬϭ5Ϳ Participation in collaborative consumption Thomas Beauvisage, Jean-Samuel Beuscart, Valérie Peugeot, Anne-Sylvie Pharabod, Marie Trespeuch – SENSE, Orange Labs Contact: Thomas Beauvisage - thomas.beauvisage@orange.com In this study, we focus on an innovative economical sector of the digital economy, the Đollaďoratiǀe ĐoŶsuŵptioŶ, which implies original forms of participation. Collaborative consumption connects, through online platforms, an offer and a demand that are both non- professional. Collaborative consumption covers a high variety of goods and services, like home renting (AirBnB) or exchanging (CouchSurfing), selling (Ebay, Etsy), carpooling (Blablacar), micro-tasking (Fiverr, Amazon Mechanical Turk). Related work Collaborative consumption relates to two major types of work on online participation in the field of sociology. Regarding its economical dimension, it deals with the production of economic value: many studies have underlined the work performed by participative websites to domesticate and merchandize amateur engagement (Mellet et al., 2014). Regarding its interactional dimension, it also deals with the coordination of participants and the emergence of implicit or explicit rules and procedures (Kittur et al., 2007). By involving individual economical interest into online marketplaces, collaborative consumption raises the question of amateur participation into economy: what are the spontaneous or organized frames of this amateur participative economy, and how does it outcome to stable forms of activity and exchange? Case study We wish to address this question by studying the case of a peer-to-peer car rental website called Drivy (www.drivy.com). Launched in 2010, Drivy is in 2015 the leading operator in France on its sector (26,000 cars for rent in June 2015 vs. 220,000 in the traditional rental services), and is currently consolidating its position and extending in Europe. Like other peer- to-peer car rental websites such as RelayRides or GetAround, Drivy offers to car owners putting them for rent on drivy.com, handles payment and charges 30% fees on transactions. We study the participative dynamics on Drivy by combining four empirical materials: 1) a fuŶĐtioŶal aŶalysis of the ǁeďsite; 2) aŶ iŶterǀieǁ ǁith Driǀy’s head of communications; 3) 12 interviews with Drivy users, including 8 car owners; 4) a dataset built from drivy.com with custom tools in May 2014, covering full car offer, transactions history and user profiles information. The characteristics of participation in peer-to-peer car rental Drivy users have several characteristics that make this site comparable to other participative websites. First, its members are relatively homogeneous regarding sociodemographics.