From Ownership to Access.

A Philosophical Perspective on the Rise of Access-Based Consumption


Increasingly, consumers do now own the goods they buy, but are merely granted access to them by providers. It is important to evaluate this development from a philosophical perspective, and analyse how it will affect the values associated with the promotion of ownership. We present three criteria – efficiency, autonomy and sustainability – that can be used in such an evaluation and show how they can be applied to current access practices.