How do configurations of the sharing economy, renewable energy, and financial development support/dampen nations’ sustainable competitiveness?

Sharing economy, renewable energy, and financial development are areas of interest in the sustainability literature. The sharing economy creates social connections potentially improving sustainable habits, renewable energy preserves the environment and advances sustainability, while financial performance represents the backbone of economic growth. However, the sharing economy’s contribution to energy efficiency and economic sustainability remains questionable. Renewable energy has limitations related to costs and has not achieved its full potential. As for financial development, its association with sustainable development remains debatable. Theory and empirical-based knowledge are scarce about which configurations of the three conditions allow nations to achieve high sustainable competitiveness versus alternativative configurations leading to low sustainable competitiveness. The present study fills these gaps by proposing a complexity theory lens and applying asymmetric, configurational, case-outcome modeling to cross-sectional data for 125 nations for 2018. This study constructs Boolean-based, asymmetric, algorithm configurations of the chosen antecedent conditions that are sufficient in achieving high sustainable competitiveness, and presents complex antecedent conditions indicating low sustainable competitiveness. The findings show that high sharing economy and high financial development jointly predict nations’ high sustainable competitiveness, while high renewable energy appears in fewer configurations with the same outcome. The study illustrates how modeling four-corner, asymmetric, case-outcome solutions overcomes limitations relevant to prior research that use symmetric variable-directional relationship modeling. • Studies sharing economy, renewable energy, financial development and sustainable competitiveness • Uses fsQCA to depict conditions sufficient to achieve versus dampen sustainable competitiveness • High sharing economy and financial development predict high sustainable competitiveness • Renewable energy is in few configurations showing its contribution to sustainable competitiveness • High population growth contributes to nations having low sustainable competitiveness