Gig Economy Worker: Work and Platform Perspective From Food Drivers and Freelancers

Introduction

The gig economy, being a new form of economy relying heavily on contractors or part-time workers within a labour market (Bulian, 2021). People working in this type of economic system are known as the gig workers because of their work flexibility and their independence but little or having no job security (Bulian, 2021). According to Oyer (2020), there has been an increasing holding of this type of jobs by gig workers and it is still growing due to the rise of technology enabling short-term labour contracting. Comprehensively, the growth of gig workers is mostly witnessed in developed economies and some emerging countries due to the use of modern software application such as Uber Technologies apps, DoorDash, Fiverr and others (Oyer, 2020). Thus, the aim of this paper is to understand gig workers opinions and adoption of gig economy from the perspective of Uber Eats, DoorDash, Fiverr and Upwork.

Uber Eats and DoorDash are known as disruptive technologies in online food industry resulting to significant changes in terms of how gig workers earn money and consumers get the service in the food industry (Gogul, 2021). There is no doubt that the field has attracted the attention of several scholars such as Ramesh et al, (2021) elaborating a strong empirical study of on online food delivery services from application perspective. However, this type of gig economic system refers to an online channel where consumers use to order food from diverse (Shankar et al, 2022). Online food delivery system uses intermediaries of people guided by a technological app giving them instruction on when they must deliver foods to their clients (Kaur et al, 2020). Moreover, most of the academic literature on the field of OFD system tries to investigate consumers responses to OFD services but does not mostly take into consideration the gig workers (Goods et al, 2019; Behl et al, 2022).

The world of Freelance has changed over the past two decades since the rise of the internet. Online freelancing has been able to provide an opportunity all around to work through internet. They are known as gig workers because they are self-employed persons providing their services to several clients around the world via internet (Masood et al, 2018). Upwork and Fiverr are the two main giants of online freelancing companies around the world, businesses can be able to tap into a global market to gain the professional services they may want beyond their local market (Green et al, 2018). There is no doubt that the gig economy has been the key to the current success of the modern way work, the scope of this study is to understand exactly the views, the opinions, and the perception of gig workers about their jobs and why they fit in terms of doing this type of modern job and why they preferred it. The gig workers are the heart of the gig economy because without them there is no operation of gig economy and that is the crucial reason why the gig workers opinions and views are very important and knowing the scope of it this the objective of this research study.

The aim of this paper is to understand the opinions of gig workers on current online platforms.

Therefore, this research study is going to be significant in the field of gig economy specially with online food delivery industry and online freelancing industry. Trying to comprehend exactly the reason why gig economy workers often adopt this new way of working is crucial for this new economy, it is also crucial for gig platforms for the purpose of improving their systems and adopt their strategy systematically with this new economy of work. Secondly, the work is going to make an academic contribution because of its significance in the field of gig economy, gig workers and platforms specially with the case study of online food delivery and online freelancing sectors.