Exploring reputation factors for startups’ survival in sharing economy

Based on the perspective of reputation and resource-based theory, we take sharing economy industry as an example and explore the reputation factors that affect the survival of startups. The dataset of 501 Chinese car-sharing platform startups and the logit regression model were used to test the variable relationships and hypotheses. The results show that the reputation gained from third-party organizations (business group affiliation, supplier) is more critical to the survival of startups than the resource advantages released by them (venture capital, technology innovation). The reputation crisis of startups is a fatal blow to the survival of startups.