Users and potential users of the sharing economy need to place a considerable amount of trust in both the person and the platform with which they are dealing. The consequences of transaction
partners’ opportunism may be severe, for example damage to goods or endangered personal
safety. Trust is, therefore, a key factor in overcoming uncertainty and mitigating risk. However,
there is no thorough overview of how trust is developed in this context. To understand how
the trust of users in the sharing economy is influenced, we performed a systematic literature
review. After screening, 45 articles were included in a qualitative synthesis in which the results
were grouped according to a well‐established trust typology. The results show various antecedents
of trust in the sharing economy (e.g. reputation, trust in the platform, and interaction experience)
related to multiple entities (i.e. seller, buyer, platform, interpersonal, and transaction).
Trust in this economy is often reduced to the use of reputation systems alone. However, our
study suggests that trust is much more complex than that and extends beyond reputation.
Furthermore, our review clearly shows that research on trust in the sharing economy is still scarce
and thus more research is needed to understand how trust is established in this context. Our
review is the first that brings together antecedents of trust in online peer‐to‐peer transactions
and integrates these findings within an existing framework. Additionally, the study suggests directions for future research in order to advance the understanding of trust in the sharing economy.
