Insights

Personal history cues are signs that remind people about events, times, and other people in their life (often from the past). These cues are everywhere in our living space: family photos on the desk, travel souvenirs on the shelf, postcards and notes on the fridge, even children's doodles on the wall or pets scratches on the furniture....

Personal history cues make day-to-day possessions and living spaces uniquely valuable to the owner. Therefore, they also make it very hard for owners to share these possessions or spaces with others in the C2C (consumer-to-consumer, or "P2P" peer-to-peer) sharing economy.

The brochure below provides a practical guide based on evidence from my research for hosts/owners and sharing platforms to understand the role of personal history cues and better manage them in the sharing context.