When things are no longer possessions: does dispossession still take place in a context of collaborative consumption?
Résumé
Based on the social life of things theory and a qualitative study conducted among 28 participants, we identify four disposition routes that occur when a consumer wants to give or sell his possessions on second-hand marketplaces (identity-based, mechanical, insecure, and opportunistic), that depends on psychological, material and environmental criteria. We highlight the fact that disposition is now becoming a rationalized and routine process rather than a dispossession one, in which individuals become distributors and opportunists.