Rob Stock.

There’s more to the sharing economy than business transactions, writes

The ‘‘sharing economy’’ is the catchy and aspirational name for a rapidly-expanding form of business.

It’s also misleading because very few people in the sharing economy are actually sharing.

The term usually covers commercial arrangements letting ordinary people earn an income from hiring out assets such as spare rooms, baches, cars, campervans, and bikes to other ordinary people with the deals arranged though online marketplaces.

But this is not sharing as children would understand it. It’s commercial enterprise, with good, old-fashioned deals being done between asset owner, and asset hirer.

‘‘I don’t share my place with you. I expect you to pay me,’’ says scientist-turned-entrepreneur Julia Charity, founder of the Look After Me homestay network.

Anyone renting a room for a night from a Look After Me host isn’t doing anything wildly different from renting a hotel room from a long-established limited liability company.

What’s revolutionary in economic terms, and justifies the ‘‘sharing economy’’ title, is that online marketplaces such as Mighway, bookabach, Yourdrive, and Look After Me, have made striking deals so efficient that ordinary folk can come in and compete easily with the companies that for so long dominated.

Charity prefers the terms ‘‘collaborative consumption’’ or ‘‘peer to peer’’ consumption to ‘‘sharing economy’’, though Dave Simmons from Mighway, which enables campervan and motorhome owners to rent out their vehicles, in disagrees.

Sharing human contact is key to the emerging economic activity, Simmons says, at least for many of the asset owners.

‘‘A lot of people who own assets do enjoy that social interaction. It is more than just a commercial deal.’’

It’s especially true among retirees who embrace the sharing economy, he says.

In the sharing economy there are asset owners, and asset renters.

It’s hard to pigeonhole the renters. They are just people