39 pct Germans use "Share Economy" services in 2017: survey

Thirty-nine percent surveyed Germans said they had used share economy services in 2017 and 40 percent plan to use them in the ongoing year, a survey showed on Wednesday.

The shared use of cars, music, accommodation and so on seems set to increase in Germany in 2018, according to the survey named "Share Economy. The New Business-Model", which was based on a representative survey of more than 4,500 consumers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey. Among them, Germany owned the largest share economy market.

A DriveNow employee demonstrates how an electric car is charged. Forty electric cars of BMW were introduced to become part of the Berlin car-sharing fleet DriveNow. [File photo: IC]

Germany's share economy market is worth more than 20 billion euros (24.6 billion U.S. dollars), the survey carried out by the consulting company PwC showed, with about 2,000 German participants taking part.

The survey also found that 51 percent men and 49 percent women tend to use the share economy services. Meanwhile, people with higher education use them more frequently.

People between 18 and 39 years old were the biggest user group, making up of 53 percent. They use sharing services more frequently than older user group, making up 62 percent of the total expenditure, the survey noted.

"The expected increases in users and providers as well as the estimated expenditure per user implies the share economy market volume in Germany to increase by 5.3 percent to 24.1 billion euros in 2018," said Nikolas Beutin, expert with PwC.