“Even though stories about services like Uber and Airbnb have put the “sharing economy” in the news, just 27% of Americans have ever heard of the term before, according to Pew Research Center’s recent survey of the new digital economy. Moreover, even those who have heard of the term have widely divergent views about what the sharing economy actually is. In our survey, we asked respondents who had heard of the sharing economy to tell us – in their own words – how they would describe the term. After reviewing and classifying nearly 1,300 responses to this question, we uncovered several distinct themes about what people think of when they hear the term sharing economy. Ultimately, the responses made clear that while the term “sharing economy” might mean something specific to those who follow the subject or are deeply embedded in the technology industry, the public as a whole has a very tenuous grasp of what the sharing economy stands for…”