sustainability Article Access Over Ownership: Case Studies of Libraries of Things Denise Baden 1,* , Ken Peattie 2 and Adekunle Oke 3 1 Southampton Business School, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK 2 Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3EU, UK; peattie@cardiff.ac.uk 3 Aberdeen Business School, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen AB10 7QE, UK; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +44-(0)23-8059-8966 Received: 31 July 2020; Accepted: 31 August 2020; Published: 2 September 2020 Abstract: Over the last decade there has been increasing interest in the concept of the sharing economy, which replaces the focus on individual ownership with a focus on access to goods and services through borrowing, hiring or sharing. This study investigates the efficacy of extending the library concept to include more items, such as those that are used infrequently. The aim is to explore how Libraries of Things (LoTs) operate and the potential to broaden their appeal, reach and sustainability. This study adopts a multiple case study method to provide a snapshot of six LoTs in the UK. Findings indicate that all LoTs shared common environmental and social values, with the most prevalent values being to use the library concept to reduce resource use and waste and to enable more equitable access to goods. All relied on volunteers and public support, in the form of free or discounted space and none were yet economically self-sufficient. This poses important questions about the future for LoTs and whether they could or even should, transition towards the mainstream to make a more substantive contribution to creating a more socially equitable and environmentally sustainable economy. Keywords: access-based consumption; circular economy; collaborative consumption; library of things; product service systems; sharing economy; sustainable business models 1. Introduction Circular economy (CE) approaches are seen as crucial to the pursuit of sustainability because they seek to ‘close the loop’ of production/consumption systems to increase the efficiency of resource use and decouple economic value creation from the destruction of finite resources [1,2]. CE approaches have attracted increasing focus to deliver more sustainable business and development that better balances the economy, the environment and society [1,2]. A common thread within the CE literature is that it requires the implementation of innovative business models [3–5], for example a shift from ownership-based models to ones based on performance or “pay-per-use” [6]. A business model describes and explains how a firm creates, delivers and captures value through various frameworks and components, including the key elements of product, customer interface, infrastructure management and financial model [7]. A key focus of circular business model (CBM) studies has been on commercial manufacturers and their evolution from conventional “linear” and wasteful systems towards more circular, resource-conserving business models. This has led to a comparative neglect of models based around sharing and product re-use, where the main emphasis is on service provision and customer relationship management [8]. It also means the role played by start-ups and by less conventional types of enterprise (e.g., social or community enterprises), adopting CBMs remains underexplored. Sharing economy business models—as a subset of CBMs—are increasingly being a means of sustainable value creation [9,10]. For example, the negative environmental impacts of a buy, Sustainability 2020, 12, 7180; doi:10.3390/su12177180 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Sustainability 2020, 12, 7180 2 of 18 Sustainability 2020, 12, x FOR PEER REVIEW 2 of 18 use and disposeSharing business economy model business can bemodels—as partially offseta subset by of greener CBMs—are production increasingly and recycling, being a means but a business of modelsustainable based on value access creation over ownership [9,10]. For example, addresses the issues negative of over-consumptionenvironmental impacts at theof a source.buy, use and Theredispose has business been amodel growth can of be studies partially into offset the by sharing greener economy production over and the recycling, last decade but a [11 business]. However, a recentmodel review based ofon sharingaccess over economy ownership business addresses models issues of for over-consumption sustainability concluded at the source. that too many studies hadThere focused has been on a the growth best-known of studies examples into the shar suching aseconomy Airbnb over and the Uber last decade and had [11]. failed However, to explore the diversitya recent ofreview sharing of sharing economy economy initiatives business [12]. mode Thisls paper for sustainability seeks to explore concluded more that sustainable too many means studies had focused on the best-known examples such as Airbnb and Uber and had failed to explore of accessing resources at the community level by extending the library concept to include more items, the diversity of sharing economy initiatives [12]. This paper seeks to explore more sustainable means such as those that are used infrequently. 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Sharing Economy Economy TheThe term term ‘sharing ‘sharing economy’ economy’ is is an an umbrella umbrella constructconstruct covering covering a variety a variety of models of models including including productproduct service service platforms platforms that that provide provide access access toto tangibletangible resources, resources, peer-to-peer peer-to-peer platforms platforms to access to access intangibleintangible resources resources (such (such as knowledge as knowledge and skills),and skills), as well as aswell platforms as platforms facilitating facilitating resale resale and exchangeand of second–handexchange of second–hand goods, gifting, goods, swapping gifting, swapping and bartering and bartering ([15–17 ].([15–17]. Of these, Of these, very fewvery modelsfew models manage manage to diffuse nationally and internationally [18]. Inability to collaborate due to the lack of trust to diffuse nationally and internationally [18]. Inability to collaborate due to the lack of trust among among the competing platforms, and the lack of open innovation in knowledge, technology and the competing platforms, and the lack of open innovation in knowledge, technology and resource resource sharing may restrict diffusion of sharing economy models [18]. Van Wes et al. [19] propose sharinga framework may restrict to analyse diffusion the ofupscaling sharing potential economy of models innovative [18 ].sustainable Van Wes business et al. [19 ]models propose (see a Figure framework to analyse1). the upscaling potential of innovative sustainable business models (see Figure1). FigureFigure 1. Components 1. Components of of business business models (ada (adaptedpted from from van van Wes Wes et al. et 2018). al. 2018). A key feature is a notion of increasing returns to adoption, whereby the more a service is accepted, the better the financial returns due to economies of scale, the more awareness is generated of the service/product