The sharing economy is changing the way we work, live and play. But nowhere have we better seen the benefits of this change than in our transportation and travel. In just a few years, we’ve added Lyft, Uber and SideCar to our zeitgeist for rides and turned to Airbnb for housing when visiting a city.

We’ve lovingly termed this change “disruption.” It’s a disruption of industries that have remained relatively unchanged for decades and a disruption craved by us all. We’re turning our cars and homes into valuable assets and facilitating the type of customer experience we all want.

Of course, like most disruptions of legacy business practices, incumbents don’t want it. And they’ll do everything they can to protect their turf. Consumer or societal benefits be damned.

In an effort to protect its turf, the incumbent lodging industry created the ironically named Share Better Coalition — and seems to believe that the best way to share is not to share at all.

In a new ad campaign, the group claims that “Airbnb only serves to make real-estate moguls richer while at the same time taking affordable housing away from everyone else.”

It’s a bold claim that can quickly evoke significant emotions. But it isn’t close to being true.

Here are the facts: More than 80 percent of Airbnb hosts share the home in which they live; hosts use nearly half of the extra money earned to pay for regular household expenses; more than half of Airbnb hosts used the money to pay rent and mortgages.

It sounds like Airbnb hosts are anything but “real-estate moguls.” And of course, Airbnb can’t be a real-estate mogul since the company doesn’t own the properties listed. It merely provides a better way to connect a buyer and a seller.

On the other hand, Marriott, Hyatt and Hilton are real-estate moguls. They own thousands of properties in hundreds of countries and rent rooms at a much higher price then you’ll find on Airbnb.

With US hotel-occupancy rates at their highest level in more than 20 years, you’d think these hotel magnates wouldn’t worry about you sharing your home. But rather than risk competition, hotel moguls are attacking ordinary citizens just trying to make a couple of extra bucks.

Indeed, far from pricing people out of their preferred New York neighborhoods, Airbnb has the opposite effect. It enables renters to cope with soaring rents.

As The Guardian reported last year: “With the average rent in New York hitting $3,000 a month and some areas of San Francisco cresting even higher, after 10% increases last December alone, the system is so stacked against most regular residents that it’s hard not to see Airbnb as a tiny correction to one of the most depressing things about these cities: $2,800-a-month studios and real-estate ads that consider it a genuine enough boast to promote that ‘every room has a window!’ In this context . . . Airbnb makes sense from both sides.”

Airbnb isn’t eroding the city’s stock of housing. It’s helping residents cope with the inflationary effects and price fluctuations of the city’s existing housing market. It may be technologically disruptive — but it’s economically stabilizing.

Safe and affordable housing is a critical component of any thriving community. It is a responsibility that all societies should take seriously.

However, there are enough legitimate challenges to cover the cost of living in our nation’s cities that we don’t need to invent new bogeymen for incumbent industries to use to protect their market share.

Perhaps the Share Better Coalition should change its focus so that the large hotel chains better share the lodging market with the average person.

And the Share Better Coalition would do better to take its battle to an issue that is legitimately preventing citizens from paying their rents. Otherwise, the coalition is just protecting its own turf.

Steve DelBianco is executive director of NetChoice, a trade association of e-commerce businesses and online consumers.