Product sharing for reuse engagement as an intrinsic motivation to continue participation in sharing economy

Contemporary societies are increasingly concerned with environmental issues, including managing carbon emissions, the use of fossil fuels, and climate change, among others (Kumar et al., 2025), generating a growing need for consumers' sustainable production and consumption, as highlighted in SDG #12, Responsible Consumption and Production (U.N., 2025). To boost responsible consumption, technological developments, including those in the sharing economy, may be adopted (Oliveira et al., 2022).

The sharing economy enables consumers to share their personal assets through digital platforms either for a fee or for free (Grieco and Palagonia, 2024; Chomachaei et al., 2024), thus potentially lowering production requirements and easing the collective environmental burden (Kansal and Bhalla, 2023). Platforms such as Uber, Airbnb, Vinted, and Depop exemplify how the sharing economy enables individuals to use resources more efficiently and extend the lifecycle of products, thereby reducing consumption and environmental harm.

As many consumers replace their products before the end of their functional life, the extended usage of these products beyond this period by other consumers who still see value in these (Liu et al., 2023) offers an important step towards more sustainable consumption and production patterns (Sun et al., 2021; Chomachaei et al., 2024). The extended use of these unwanted products may also ease the financial burden on consumers, warranting the value of such product sharing. However, despite important insights, the scholarly acumen of consumers' more sustainable engagement, such as selling or giving away their used items for further use by others in the sharing economy (Psarommatis et al., 2025), lags to date. That is, while prior authors have assessed areas like marketing (e.g. Eckhardt et al., 2019), consumer coproduction (Dellaert, 2019), retailing (Ajayi et al., 2023) and consumer behaviour in the sharing economy (Cho et al., 2020), a deeper understanding of consumers' sustainable engagement (and in particular, their product sharing for reuse engagement) in this context lags behind, revealing an important gap in the literature.

While sharing unwanted products in the sharing economy has the potential to make a substantial contribution to reducing environmental harm, it is contingent to an important extent on consumers' values and motivations (Merino-Saum et al., 2023; White et al., 2019). Though various theoretical approaches emphasize the importance of extrinsic motivation in the form of economic benefits (Agarwal and Steinmetz, 2019), the nature of the key intrinsic motivation remains under investigation. We conceptualize that the effects of personality traits, pro-environmental/biospheric values, and overall environmental self-identity (Merino-Saum et al., 2023; White et al., 2019; Van der Werff et al., 2013) could be further elaborated with the help of a concept that reflects consumer sustainable engagement (Yan et al., 2024; Piligrimiene et al., 2020; Salciuviene et al., 2025). Since the content of such a concept may vary depending on the type of pro-environmental behaviour, we further concentrate on the type of engagement in product sharing for its reuse, the trigger of the sharing (selling) of used personal items (Barnes and Mattsson, 2017). This way, we examine consumers' product sharing for reuse engagement (PSRE) as their investment of cognitive, emotional, and behavioural resources in passing on their used items to others (Hollebeek et al., 2019).

The current study aims to propose the mechanism that explains how PSRE, as an intrinsic motivation, interacts with economic benefits (extrinsic motivation) in impacting pro-environmental behaviour (sharing used items). In reaching this aim, the study not only assesses the direct impacts of economic benefits and PSRE on sharing behaviour continuation, but also tests the indirect effect of PSRE via enjoyment of interaction with a sharing platform, and even more importantly, the moderating effect of PSRE on the impact of economic benefits on sharing continuation. By addressing these objectives, we seek to reduce an important research gap in the literature on consumer engagement in pro-environmental behaviours, since many previous studies on motivations for sharing used personal goods mainly concentrate on economic motivations, incentives, or rewards (Agarwal and Steinmetz, 2019; Urbonavicius and Sezer, 2019). Moreover, consumers' core motivation to reduce environmental harm by sharing their used personal items remains under-studied (Ek Styvén and Mariani, 2020), exposing a gap in the literature. Specifically, there is a gap in knowledge about how intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to share used items interact, since the current state of knowledge mainly concentrates on interactions between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that trigger green purchase intention and behaviour rather than sharing (Duong et al., 2023).

Addressing these gaps, this research makes the following main contributions to the sustainable consumption, engagement, and circular economy literature. First, building on the work of established engagement and responsible marketing authors (Hollebeek et al., 2023a, b; Kumar et al., 2025), we understand sustainable consumer engagement as a buyer's investment of their cognitive, emotional, and behavioural resources to reduce the environmental harm that ensues from their consumption. In this article, we focus on its specific theoretical subset of consumers' PSRE that plays the role of an important internal motivation to continue sharing activities. We conceptualize product sharing for reuse engagement (PSRE) as consumers' resource investment in passing on their used items for further usage by others, in line with the circular economy (Mostaghel et al., 2023).

Second, we use PSRE as a key intrinsic motivation for modelling a motivational mechanism in regard to pro-environmental behaviour, “the commission of acts that benefit the natural environment (recycling) and the omission of acts that harm it” (Lange and Dewitte, 2019, p. 92). Specifically, we propose a mechanism that elaborates how PSRE (intrinsic motivator), together with economic benefits (extrinsic motivator), directly and indirectly impacts consumers' intent to continue sharing their used items for further use by others on sharing platforms. Most importantly, this mechanism predicts a novel type of moderation of consumers' PSRE (intrinsic motivation) and the impact of perceived economic benefit (extrinsic motivation) on their behavioural intentions, which assumes that strengthened PSRE reduces the impact of economic benefits. This discloses a new form of interaction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in regard to pro-environmental behaviours, extending former knowledge on the interaction in regard to interactions between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (Duong et al., 2023).

Third, we identify a mediating effect of consumers' enjoyment in sharing goods on online platforms between their PSRE and their behavioural intentions to continue sharing activities. Specifically, this finding adds further nuance to the relationship between consumers' intrinsic motivation and their behavioural intentions by demonstrating the importance of their enjoyment from interaction with a sharing platform.

Consumer/customer engagement, a consumer's (customer's) investment of their cognitive, emotional, and behavioural resources in their interactions with a specific object (Hollebeek et al., 2019), has been heralded as a key concept for understanding consumer behaviour (Hollebeek et al., 2022). Given its inherently motivational nature (Brodie et al., 2011), consumer/customer engagement exhibits a direct theoretical link to consumers' (customers') motivations for undertaking particular behaviours.

Consumer engagement is typically modelled as a multidimensional construct comprising cognitive, emotional, and behavioural dimensions (Hollebeek et al., 2023a, b). In the chosen research context, cognitive engagement reflects the consumer's cognitive resource investment in (i.e. mental elaboration of) sharing their used items for reuse (Hollebeek et al., 2014), while emotional engagement refers to the individual's affective resource investment (e.g. passion for) doing so (Urbonavicius et al., 2025). Finally, behavioural engagement reflects the consumer's investment of time, energy, and effort in sharing their items for reuse (Srivastava and Sivaramakrishnan, 2021; Kumar et al., 2025).

While the consumer (customer) engagement literature originally developed largely outside of the sustainability and corporate social responsibility literature (Rosado-Pinto and Loureiro, 2020), it is increasingly being applied in this context (e.g. Mansoor et al., 2022; Salnikova et al., 2022) under different designations, including responsible engagement (e.g. Kumar et al., 2025), sustainable engagement (La Rosa and Johnson Jorgensen, 2021), socially responsible engagement (Dahrouj et al., 2025), and (dis)engagement in sustainable development (Moreira et al., 2020), among others. An overview of selected sustainable consumer engagement and related concepts is provided in Table 1.

Building on this literature stream coupled with the addressing consumer (customer) engagement literature (Brodie et al., 2011; Hollebeek et al., 2019), we conceptualize consumers' product sharing for reuse engagement (PSRE) as the consumer's investment of their cognitive, emotional, and/or behavioural resources in sharing their used products for reuse by others, which has the potential to make a pertinent contribution to reducing manufacturing requirements. Therefore, consumers' PSRE exists as a theoretical sub-set of their broader sustainability engagement, which has been shown to impact their pro-environmental behaviour (Geiger et al., 2018; Mansoor et al., 2022). PSRE differs from sustainable consumption involvement, since in the context of sustainable consumption, involvement and engagement are related but distinct concepts that represent different stages of a consumer's relationship with sustainability. Involvement typically refers to the perceived importance of sustainability based on consumers' needs and values, while sustainability engagement and specifically PSRE represent a psychological process of interactive participation with sustainability-related initiatives (Reppmann et al., 2025; Anwar et al., 2025). However, involvement and engagement factors may be similarly impacted by antecedents of an individual's perceptions about themselves being environmentally conscious: green self-identity, nature-love, environmental self-identity, environmental concern, and more (Pagano et al., 2025; Piligrimiene et al., 2020).

Given the pressing demand for more sustainable consumption (White et al., 2019), consumers are increasingly adopting more pro-environmental behaviours (Lange and Dewitte, 2019). Pro-environmental behaviour may arise out of consumers' own personal volition (intrinsic motivation) or be influenced by external sources (Pugno and Sarracino, 2021), in line with self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan, 2000, 2013). While intrinsic motivations refer to consumers' internal, innate drivers (e.g. values, beliefs–Li and Wen, 2019), extrinsic motivations are shaped by external forces (e.g. advertising, economic benefit; Merino-Saum et al., 2023; Salnikova et al., 2022). The availability of used products for sharing largely depends on the motivations of their owners to share them with others, whether for financial benefit or free of charge (White et al., 2019; Li and Wen, 2019).

Different tools may be used to stimulate pro-environmental behaviour, including sharing economy or collaborative consumption platforms (Park, 2025; Gazzola et al., 2019). Specifically, by sharing specific products across multiple individuals, production requirements may be lowered, while also delaying the disposal of (used) goods (Agarwal and Steinmetz, 2019; Urbonavicius and Sezer, 2019). The sharing economy enables product sharing in myriad ways (e.g. private individuals sharing their spare room with guests (e.g. Airbnb), car owners sharing their vehicle with ride hailers (e.g. Uber), or consumers sharing their unwanted used goods with others, e.g. Vinted, ThredUp, Depop, or Facebook Marketplace; Rückert et al., 2024).

Building on the foregoing argumentation, we next delve further into consumers' key motivations for sharing their used products with others on sharing platforms. In many cases, used products are shared with others on sharing platforms for free or for remuneration (Hamari et al., 2016). Economic benefits have been analyzed using various theories, including the theory of planned behaviour, the theory of reasoned action, or self-determination theory, among others (Barnes and Mattsson, 2017; Gazzola et al., 2019; Oliveira et al., 2022; Li et al., 2024).

However, insights from behavioural economics (Thaler, 2016) and self-determination theory help to clarify the aspects of economic (monetary) motivations and their interplay with intrinsic motivators (Jiang et al., 2021; Oliveira et al., 2022). Intrinsic motivations to share used products arise from individuals' personality traits, identities, and characteristics, along with their understanding of the importance of socio-environmental issues (Jiang et al., 2021; Merino-Saum et al., 2023; Pagano et al., 2025). In other words, intrinsic motivations are determined by how strongly consumers engage in pro-environmental behaviour (Lange and Dewitte, 2019) by expressing their environmental self-identity in a form of sustainable activities and behaviours (Li et al., 2024; Pagano et al., 2025).

As consumers' sustainability engagement integrates environmental concerns and environmental self-identity of a consumer with their resource investments in sustainable behaviours (Salnikova et al., 2022; Hollebeek et al., 2019), it represents a major intrinsic motivation for sharing used personal items through sharing platforms. Prior research has assessed the impact of economic benefits (extrinsic motivation) and various sustainability-related antecedents (intrinsic motivation) on sharing economy participation and intention, along with other factors (see Table 2).

It is noticeable that economic benefits and sustainability factors are among the leading drivers of pro-environmental behaviour. To understand consumers' intrinsic (sustainability) and extrinsic motivations on pro-environmental behaviours, self-determination theory suggests that intrinsic motivations are viewed as key behavioural drivers (Deci and Ryan, 2013). Intrinsic motivations include pursuing personally relevant (sustainable) objectives, which (given their intrinsic nature) may spawn the individual's enjoyment occurring from sharing used goods versus disposing them.

In the case of sharing used products, a key extrinsic motivational factor lies in the economic benefit anticipated from the sale of goods (Liu et al., 2023), yielding the expected effect of economic benefit on their sharing intentions (Oliveira et al., 2022). We relate them to intrinsic motivation (PSRE) that exerts both direct and indirect effects on intentions. Additionally, we foresee a moderating effect of product sharing for reuse engagement on the interaction between economic benefits and intentions. This is summarized in Figure 1 below.

Based on self-determination theory, consumers' extrinsic motivation is expected to exert a direct, positive effect on their intent to continue sharing their used goods (Hamari et al., 2016; Urbonavicius and Sezer, 2019). The impact of economic benefit on their behavioural intentions is predicted to be positive, since it reflects an anticipated gain versus the actions that are required to attain these gains (Barnes and Mattsson, 2017; Kaushal and Prashar, 2022). We postulate.

Under growing environmental concerns, consumers' engagement with environmental issues becomes an important intrinsic driving force for their behaviour (White et al., 2019; Li and Wen, 2019; Kumar et al., 2025). Therefore, their sustainability concerns become a key determinant of their intention to continue sharing used goods. It is expected that PSRE exerts a direct impact on their intention to continue sharing their used goods. This is because intrinsic motivation, to the extent that it links to consumers' broader perception of environmental sustainability, tends to trigger their pro-environmental intentions and behaviour (Gazzola et al., 2019; Oliveira et al., 2022), similarly, as the Environmental Self-Identity Theory predicts environmental self-identity acting as an intrinsic motivator for pro-environmental behaviours (Pagano et al., 2025). We posit:

Consumers' product sharing for reuse engagement may also exert an indirect impact on their intention to continue sharing their used goods. Specifically, performing actions that support their sustainable engagement will tend to raise personal satisfaction from the perceptions about the process, potentially yielding a sense of enjoyment (Ramos-Hidalgo et al., 2022; Schueller and Seligman, 2010). This enjoyment will in turn raise their intent to continue sharing their used goods on sharing platforms, such that higher enjoyment will tend to see consumers' greater future sharing continuance intentions (Deci and Ryan, 2000; Li and Wen, 2019). We posit:

Self-determination theory suggests that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations are interrelated; specifically, originally extrinsic cues can be internalized, transforming them into intrinsic cues (Ryan and Deci, 2000). The general expectation is that extrinsic incentives may either stimulate or undermine the development of intrinsic motivations, creating a so-called crowding-out effect, meaning that an external intervention through monetary incentives or punishments may undermine or strengthen intrinsic motivation (Frey, 1994). However, much less is known about a potential opposite effect, that is, how consumers' intrinsic motivation may modify the strength of the impact of extrinsic motivation, which may be predicted by observing sharing behaviours. In this study, a key extrinsic motivation for sharing one's used goods is of an economic nature (Gazzola et al., 2019). Sustainability-driven PSRE may reduce the strength of this motivation on intention if consumers reflexively evaluate, internalize, and identify the benefits of sharing (Li et al., 2024). Statistically, this is represented by the proposed negative moderating effect of consumers' PSRE on the effect of perceived economic benefit and their intent to continue sharing. We hypothesize.

The study focused on individuals who are experienced in selling their used personal items on the Vinted platform, an online marketplace known for its active approach to facilitating environmentally friendly solutions that aim to mitigate the fashion industry's environmental footprint. Though the platform operates in the U.S. and in the majority of European countries, data was collected in the country of the origin of Vinted, Lithuania, where the company is best known. As the home country of the first European consumer-to-consumer fashion unicorn, Lithuania has developed a unique institutionalized trust in digitally-supported transactions with second-hand products, being a suitable field for data collection. To collect the data, we used a survey research design (Lange and Dewitte, 2019). In order to ensure data quality, participants of the survey were recruited via specialized digital sharing economy communities and sustainable fashion groups on social media that help identify loyal Vinted clients. Respondents who performed no selling activities during the previous year were excluded from the survey after answering the control question. This targeted approach helped mitigate the inherent limitations of convenience sampling by focussing on high-involvement users. Consequently, 227 questionnaires were used for the analysis. The sample comprises 16% males (84% females), representing typical females' disproportionate interest in apparel shopping and/or sharing (Liu et al., 2023). Of these respondents, 21.8% fell within the 18–23 age group, 36.4% were 24–27, 19.4% were 28–35, 14.6% were 36–45, and 7.8% were aged 46 years or older.

To ensure content validity, all factors were measured by deploying widely established scales. Specifically, economic benefits were assessed using Raza et al.’s (2021) four-item scale, while consumers' PSRE was gauged using an adapted version of Hamari et al.’s (2016) instrument (Hollebeek et al., 2023a, b). The perceived enjoyment measure was sourced from Van Der Heijden (2004), and sharing continuation intention was measured using Jang et al.’s (2015) three-item eco-centric scale, capturing the relatively enduring nature of sustainable behaviour (Jiang et al., 2021; Liu et al., 2023). The detailed information on all sales is provided in  Appendix 1. All items were rated using Likert-type scales ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).

The data was analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), which is in line with the type of study (Sarstedt et al., 2021). The measurement model exhibits an appropriate fit to the data: SRMR = 0.074 (for the saturated model) and SRMR = 0.09 (for the estimated model; Kock, 2020). The average variance extracted (AVE) and construct reliability scores surpassed their respective thresholds (AVE>0.5; Cronbach's alpha and Composite reliability >0.7; Hair et al., 2024). The discriminant validity of all the modelled constructs was also appropriate, the largest coefficient being 0.572 (Hair et al., 2024). On that basis, we developed a structural model and tested hypotheses.

The structural model was assessed using the PLS-SEM approach. Significance testing of the path coefficients was conducted using a bootstrapping procedure with 5,000 subsamples and bias-corrected and accelerated (BCa) confidence intervals.

The first hypothesis (H1) predicts that economic benefit positively impacts consumers' intention to continue sharing their used goods on sharing platforms, which was confirmed in the data: the impact was significant and positive (β = 0.270; BCa CI [0.162, 0.378]; t = 4.884; p ≤ 0.001). H2 predicts a direct positive impact of consumers' PSRE on their intention to continue sharing their used goods. This hypothesis was also confirmed with an observed significant positive effect (β = 0.213; BCa CI [0.079, 0.323]; t = 3.496; p ≤ 0.001). H3 predicted a positive indirect impact of consumers' PSRE on their intent to continue sharing goods through the mediating aspect of excitement, which was also supported (β = 0.100; BCa CI [0.040, 0.173]; t = 2.899; p = 0.004). H4 predicted a negative moderating effect of PSRE on the effect of economic benefit on consumers' intention to continue sharing their used goods. The hypothesis was supported, since the moderation effect of sustainability engagement on the relationship between economic benefits and continuation intention was negative and statistically significant (β = −0.193; 95% BCa CI [−0.274, −0.067]; t = 3.681; p ≤ 0.001).

The moderation effect is visualized in the slope analysis graph shown in Figure 2.

The moderation effect was further examined using simple slope analysis at ±1 standard deviation of the moderator. Statistically, at low levels of PSRE (−1 SD), economic benefits had a strong positive effect on continuation intention (β = 0.462; 95% BCa CI [0.292, 0.590]). At the mean level of PSRE, economic benefits had a weaker positive effect on continuation intention (β = 0.270; 95% BCa CI [0.162, 0.378]). At the high levels of PSRE (+1 SD), the effect was substantially weaker, and the confidence interval included zero (β = 0.077; 95% BCa CI [−0.057, 0.247]). Although the conditional effects remain positive across levels of sustainability engagement, their magnitude decreases substantially, which is consistent with the negative interaction effect.

This study elaborates on prior work addressing the effects of consumers' intrinsic and extrinsic motivations on their intent to continue their pro-environmental behaviour. In order to assess intrinsic motivations, we developed the concept and empirically measured the factor of consumers' PSRE, which represents a theoretical subset of the sustainability engagement and responsible engagement concepts (Hamari et al., 2016; Kumar et al., 2025). Specifically, consumers' product sharing for reuse engagement focuses on the part of sustainability engagement that addresses consumers' sharing of their used items on sharing platforms. The concept of consumers' product sharing for reuse engagement extends prior customer/consumer engagement research (e.g. Hollebeek et al., 2019; Brodie et al., 2011), focussing on the product sharing for reuse as the focal engagement object. The findings show that customer/consumer engagement is an important factor not only in the context of products and brands, but also to better understand consumers' motivations to act in environmentally responsible ways (Kumar et al., 2025; Piligrimiene et al., 2020; Moreira et al., 2020). This way PSRE further develops the ideas proposed in Environmental Self-Identity Theory (Van der Werff et al., 2013). Similar to the factor of environmental self-identity, PSRE aggregates impacts of numerous pro-environmental antecedents; however, PSRE focuses on the part of sustainability engagement with a specific type of pro-environmental behaviour (sharing used items) while environmental self-identity aims to reflect a general sense of “nature connectedness” (Pagano et al., 2025).

The key finding of the current study includes developing and testing a mechanism that explains how PSRE, as an intrinsic motivation, interacts with economic benefits (extrinsic motivation) in the context of a specific pro-environmental behaviour (sharing of used items). Similar to earlier studies, we considered direct impacts of extrinsic and intrinsic factors on intention to continue pro-environmental behaviour, thus following the concept used in former studies (Urbonavicius and Sezer, 2019). Our findings indicate the significant positive impact of economic benefits (extrinsic motivation), which replicates and extends the key finding of earlier studies (García-Rodríguez et al., 2022; Hamari et al., 2016; Oliveira et al., 2022) with particular emphasis on sharing goods via online platforms. However, the test of the direct impact of extrinsic motivations (economic benefits) in this study was mainly needed as a prerequisite for the further analysis that aimed to test how this relationship becomes weaker when moderated by PSRE. Discovering the moderating effect of consumers' PSRE in the association of their extrinsic motivation on their intention to continue a pro-environmental behaviour is the most novel finding of this study, justifying the earlier unknown interaction between the two types of motivation. This extends knowledge in two domains: (1) motivational mechanisms (interactions between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations); and (2) environmental protection-linked behaviours/motivational substitution between two types of motivations affecting intention to continue pro-environmental behaviour. We discovered that as the impact of consumers' intrinsic motivation (PSRE) grows stronger, it starts reducing the impact of their extrinsic motivation (economic benefits) to continue a pro-environmental behaviour. While this does not neglect or deprecate the importance of the direct effect of extrinsic motivation on the intention to continue sharing goods (Jiang et al., 2021), it signals that growing concerns about climate change and sustainability may reduce the necessity to offer extensive economic benefits to encourage the sharing of used products. This observation thus offers a motivational substitution effect: when consumers' PSRE increases, it reduces the impact of their perceived economic benefit, which is novel in pro-environmental behaviour research and beyond. This finding might be viewed as an extension of Duong et al.'s (2023) study, which concentrated on interactions between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in the case of green purchasing behaviour.

Equally, this study also contributes to the research addressing the impact of sustainability on sharing behaviour (Kaushal and Prashar, 2022; Li et al., 2024) and finds that consumers' PSRE directly and positively affects behavioural intention (Liu et al., 2023; Jiang et al., 2021). However, in addition to the direct impact, this study assesses the indirect impact of consumers' PSRE, mediated by enjoyment. Though enjoyment has been considered in prior studies (García-Rodríguez et al., 2022; Oliveira et al., 2022), evidence regarding the proposed mediating effect has remained sparse to date (Li and Wen, 2019). Analysis of consumers' PSRE in the online setting allowed us to emphasize the importance of enjoyment within the sharing process and provided a theoretical grounding for the evidence discovered that explains why enjoyment mediates the intrinsic motivation of consumers' PSRE on their pro-environmental behaviour: it reflects the fulfilment of psychological needs when consumers successfully pursue their pro-environmental goals through sharing.

In summary, the study contributes to the literature on pro-environmental behaviours, customer engagement, and sharing economies, suggesting a novel mechanism of interaction between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations and discovering a new effect of motivation substitution between them.

This research raises two main managerial implications. First, as the sharing economy continues to develop, the management of participating companies needs to have extensive knowledge of the motivational mechanisms that trigger sharing behaviour. The study discloses that individuals with low sustainability engagement rely more strongly on economic incentives when deciding whether to continue sharing goods. In contrast, for highly sustainability-engaged individuals, economic benefits play a less decisive role, indicating that other motivations may be more salient. The tested effects suggest that platforms of sharing services should not only concentrate on promoting financial gains, but should also focus on developing consumers' PSRE. To do so, they should show how their platforms participate in pro-environmental activities and demonstrate their results. Positioning should concentrate on the pro-environmental values, since the second-hand consumption is increasingly understood as a form of social signalling, and the reuse of products is linked to intellectualism, modern ethics, and smart consumption.

Second, we recommend positioning sharing platforms as enjoyable channels to instil consumers' excitement in performing important pro-environmental behaviour to raise their motivation to engage in such behaviour. To this end, sharing platforms are advised to adopt mission and vision statements that explicitly focus on pro-environmental issues and activities, along with ensuring the platform's smooth functionality by incorporating gamified elements that allow consumers to track the extent to which they contribute to conservation or waste reduction by ‘saving’ a certain number of resources – units of energy, raw materials, clean air, etc. (Leclercq et al., 2020).

This study examined consumers' PSRE, which was predicted to impact their intent to continue sharing their used goods on sharing platforms. Despite its contribution, the research is also subject to specific limitations that engender avenues for further exploration. First, the data was only collected from a single country, Lithuania. However, as consumer engagement has been shown to differ across individuals of different cultures (Hollebeek et al., 2022), we recommend replicating and extending the study to other contexts, employing respondents who use different sharing platforms.

Second, we tested the mediating role of consumers' enjoyment with the process of sharing their used goods on a specific sharing platform in the association of their PSRE on their intent to continue sharing their used items on such platforms. However, consumers' level of enjoyment may vary when different gamified elements are used; thus, further elucidating the role of consumer enjoyment.

Additionally, future research may further elaborate on the pro-environmental position of a sharing platform and the community that uses it by including the environmental self-identity factor into the scope of analysis. This promises to be an intriguing direction for future studies.