New questions help ONS measure sharing economy

ONS has today announced plans to introduce new questions to its household and business internet surveys as part of plans to produce standalone statistics on the sharing economy. The new questions will provide data on the proportion of people and businesses that have arranged accommodation or transport services via platforms such as Airbnb, SpareRoom, Uber and Lyft. ONS currently plans to publish the first estimates of individuals’ use of sharing economy platforms in August 2017. ONS is also reviewing potential administrative data sources and conducting a pilot study using web scraping to classify sharing economy businesses.