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Top1. Introduction
There has been a great increase in the use of smart phone app based electric scooter rental companies (Bird, 2021; Lime, 2021; Spin, 2021) in the US cities and other parts of the world. For instance, Bird, an electric scooter rental company, which was founded in year 2017, has reached more than 100 cities by the end of 2018 and received hundreds of millions of dollars in funding (Emerson, 2018). These electric scooters have potential to provide a great value to individuals, especially in urban areas, where pedestrian space is a big constraint. These scooters are small (smaller than bicycle) and have dock-less charging. Furthermore, they emit zero greenhouse gases and have almost zero noise pollution.
One of the unique aspects of the business model of these scooter companies is that they rely on gig workers to pick and deliver (return) their scooters. Anyone with a smartphone can become a contract-worker for these companies. One advantage of this gig-model is that the scooter rental companies do not have to hire full time workers to recharge their scooters. Gig workers can potentially earn more than $1000 per month by working as a part time worker for these companies (Atlantic, 2018; Ridester, 2021). Figure 1 shows the electric scooters that are available for recharging in Charlotte, NC, USA at a point of time. This view of the app allows a worker to locate the available scooters in a region and learn about the reward (“bounty” in Bird terminology) available for charging them.
Figure 1. A Bird app showing monetary rewards available for charging birds scooters in the city of Charlotte, NC, USA (Source: Bird app)
After a gig worker picks and charges a set of scooters, the app then suggests the worker to select a space from a set of predesignated spaces to deliver (return) the charged scooters. These spaces are called nest in the terminology of Bird company. Figure 2 shows how a worker can select (claim) a space to drop the charged scooters. Currently, the apps only allow workers to return the charged scooters between 4:00am to 7:00am as the demand for scooters is higher in the morning commute hours. Chargers can claim a nest by tapping “claim nest” in the app, which reserves a nest for a period of 30 minutes. If the charged scooters are not delivered at the claimed nest location within the 30 minutes of claiming, then the nest is “released” to all the chargers to claim, and it reappears on the map. A charger, in the current model, can only claim one nest at a time and a typical nest has a capacity of 3 scooters as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. A Bird app displaying the available Nests (charging station) in Santa Monica city (Source: Bird app)
Although the idea of utilizing gig workers in the electric scooter rental industry is revolutionary, the existing compensation, and scooter picking, and scooter delivery (return) mechanisms of these companies have several limitations that make them less attractive for their workers. From the perspective of a gig-worker, one of the fundamental limitations is that it causes a great uncertainty in the expected revenue of a charger from her scooter collection journey. For example, in the worst case it is possible that the charger may not get any revenue for her trip. This is possible because by the time she reaches an electric scooter there is a chance that some other worker can arrive at the location a little earlier and claim the scooter. Lorenz (2018) documents worker safety issues in case more than one worker arrive to claim a scooter at the same time. Lime beta tested a new reserve feature in a few cities that would allow workers to reserve a scooter for 30 minutes before beginning her scooter collection journey (Hawkins, A. J., 2019). While delivering the charged scooters to nests, the revenue uncertainty is lesser for workers compare to scooter picking phase, as the worker can reserve a nest for the next 30 minutes. This provides a level of guarantee that if a worker arrives at a nest on time (30 minutes), he will be able to return the scooter and get the monetary reward.