Regulating digitalization: Sharing economy and the case of Uber in Dubrovnik

Abstract

People have become the part of the digital society in which globalization has found channels to be spread. Because of the frequent use of technology, large number of innovations involve platforms and applications. Those new technological changes influence people in many ways and they call for rapid policy development in order to be effective. Governments need to learn to respond adequately to the new trends digitalization is bringing. One of those trends is the sharing economy. As a technological and innovative trend, it is still struggling with the regulation and meaning of the term. Uber, as one of the most successful platforms of the sharing economy has also dealt with regulation issues. The first part of the article introduced the regulatory challenges that digitalization brought as well as explained what the sharing economy meant. It also analyzed regulation problems that Uber has been facing in numerous countries, with special emphasis on Croatia. The second part of the article dealt with how citizens have accepted Uber. The author has conducted a survey in Dubrovnik in which was shown that citizens prefer Uber as sharing economy platform and also pointed out why.