Abstract: In order to quickly build a platform ecosystem, the sharing economy platform often adopts the “burning money” strategy to attract both supply and demand. Whether burning money strategy is useful and how to exert its maximum effect is a hot topic to be studied. In order to explore the usefulness of the strategy of burning money in the initial stage of sharing economy platforms, this paper takes the sharing economy platform to construct the initial burning money strategy as the research object, and constructs the research model of the relationship between burning money, burning objects, APP score and user growth rate. The structural equation model is used to analyze and model the data of 120 domestic sharing economy platforms. The research results show that burning money strategy can directly increase the user growth rate in the initial stage of the sharing economy platform; burning money strategy can indirectly increase the user growth rate in the initial stage of the sharing economy platform by affecting the APP score; burning money strategy can increase the sharing economy platform by attracting suppliers, but cannot increase the user growth rate in the initial stage of the sharing economy platform by attracting demands. The above research results can provide practical guidance for the implementation of burning economy strategy in the initial stage of the construction of the sharing economy platform.

Key words: sharing economy, burning money strategy, platform construction, platform strategy