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1. Introduction
The development of information and communication technology has facilitated the rise of the sharing economy business model. In the sharing economy model, resources can be shared in an innovative way, such as by contributing a room (e.g. Airbnb, www.airban.com), offering a taxi service (e.g. Uber, www.uber.com), sharing cars (e.g. Zipcar, www.zipcar.com) and sharing bicycles (e.g. JCDecaux, www.jcdecaux.com). The large-scale growth of these innovative new business models has received widespread attention worldwide, and the success of startups relying on new business models has also driven economic growth (Eckhardt and Bardhi, 2015). In the global popularity of the sharing economy, as an emerging market, China's sharing economy business model has developed later than those of other countries. However, the speed of its development is astounding. In 2016, China's sharing economy's total market transaction size exceeded 2.4 trillion Yuan (one dollar was worth 6.91 yuan on average in 2017) with more than 500 million participants.
Since 2015, China's first batch of business models representing the sharing economy has led to the large-scale emergence of shared bicycles. Sharing bicycles helps alleviate urban traffic congestion, reduce environmental pollution, improve resource reuse, facilitate short-distance travel and provide convenience and flexibility (Chen et al., 2020; Eren and Uz, 2020). The bike-sharing industry has received the attention of the whole society and the policy support of the Chinese government. Venture capital (VC) is even more enthusiastic about investing in shared bikes. The cumulative investment amount has reached 25.8 billion Yuan, setting a new historical record for VC investment in a single industry in China. Although resources from all aspects have poured into the bike-sharing industry, a large number of bike-sharing enterprises have failed, closed down, gone bankrupt and withdrawn from the market in just one year since 2017. The abandoned bicycles and other subsequent problems left behind have brought a substantial negative impact on society.
Over the past 20 years, the rapid growth of new businesses on the Internet and their innovations has disrupted the traditional business model. There are also Internet startups with valuations that soared to sky-high levels and then collapsed quickly. According to the 2018 Financial Services report on Small and Micro Enterprises in China released by the People's Bank of China, the average life span...