Standards Development

Scope

The document provides guidelines for platform operators when verifying providers (including entry, maintaining and exit).

Purpose

The proposal aims to:

- Fill in the lack of market access systems related to the sharing economy, raise the barriers to entry into the sharing economy digital platform, and promote the healthy and sustainable development of the sharing economy.

- Effectively define the main responsibilities of platform operators of the sharing economy, ensure that digital platform operators build a rigorous verify mechanism to assess the specific qualifications of providers;

- Clarify the access conditions for providers of the sharing economy digital platform, promote the transparency of providers' information, the safe and reliable of digital platform operation, and provide guidance for the digital platform operator to formulate internal platform entry standards; - Protect the interests of consumers, promote the establishment of a mutual trust mechanism between providers, platform operators and users.

Justification 1: Clarify the responsibilities of providers and digital platform operators, and strengthen the digital platform operators' verification of identity and credentials of providers, which will better maintain the stable, healthy and sustainable development of the sharing economy. With the update and popularization of the Internet and other electronic information technologies, emerging forms of the sharing economy have been incubated and presented an explosive growth trend around the world. The sharing economy has gradually become a new economic growth point for all countries. When Airbnb, Uber, Zipcar, BlaBlaCar and Couchsurfing were founded, there were only a handful of sharing economy digital platforms in the world. Today, there are thousands of sharing economy digital platforms operating in almost every industry, and the global sharing economy industry generates hundreds of millions of transactions every day. For example, in China the transaction volume of the shared economy market in 2019 was $468.4 billion, an increase of 11.6% over the previous year. The number of participants in the sharing economy was about 800 million, of which about 78 million were service providers. However, the sharing economy has the characteristics of the network, crossregional, cross-industry, the development of related industry standards is slightly lagging behind, and the lack of market access system makes the platform’s entry threshold too low, leading to chaos in the sharing economy market, and the platform has the responsibility to form a systematic and safe regulatory system through the establishment of platform access mechanism to promote the healthy operation of sharing economy.

Justification 2: regulating the settled activities of providers in the whole process, and taking advantage of big data to give consideration to the interests of users, which is of great significance for winning consumer trust, protecting consumer rights and interests, expanding the base of mass participation, and improving the quality and efficiency of the sharing economy. As a new type of network economy platform that focuses on sharing services and connects both the supply and demand sides of idle resources, while operating within the scope permitted by law, it must also respond to public concerns, especially whether consumers can trust providers to provide safe and effective products and services , This requires higher and consistent verifying standards in the filtering and screening of identity, product or service information. This will expand the scope of sharing demand and improve the effectiveness of the sharing economy.

Justification 3: cutting into the entry verification of the sharing economy digital platform provider, enrich the existing sharing economy standard structure. At present, there are only three domestic and foreign standards on the sharing economy. Including IWA 27:2017 Guiding Principles and Framework for the Sharing Economy, BSI PAS 202:2019 Sharing Economy -- Operation of an online Platform – Specification, and ISO/WD 42500:2020 Sharing Economy -- The Terminology and Principle, which is used to standardize the industry from the perspective of framework, principles, terminology and platform operation, lays the foundation for the development of future classification standards. Shared economic platform provider in verify standard field is still blank. At the same time, because providers in the sharing economy occupy different market fields such as transportation, housing accommodation, shared finance, knowledge and skills, and life services, they can pass the entry verify standards. Distinguishing the regulatory principles can clarify the verify requirements for providers in different market sectors, enrich the current sharing economy standards, and promote the in-depth development of sharing economy standardization activities.

Justification 4: Clarify the access regulations for sharing economy digital platforms, and realize the perfect docking between the sharing economy and national governance. The new format of the sharing economy has broken the constraints of time and space, but also faces many uncertainties. E.g, the operation characteristics of each type of shared economic model are different, the boundary of industry is also blurred, the supervision department of some shared economic platforms is difficult to be clear, the relevant new laws and regulations are not perfect, and there is a complex contradiction between platform operators, providers and users. The entry verify standard will provide guidance for the platform operators to formulate the internal entry standards of the digital platform, at the same time provide a reference for the establishment of future laws and regulations, promote continuous improvement of the sharing economy.