Homines Diversi: Heterogeneous Earner Behaviors in the Platform Economy

Mehmet Cansoy; Samantha Eddy; Isak Ladegaard; Juliet B. Schor

doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11508

Authors

Mehmet Cansoy Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Fairfield University https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9448-7005

Mehmet Cansoy is Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Fairfield University. His research, published in Socio-Economic Review and Theory and Society focuses on the relationship between technology and inequality, specifically the emergence of online platforms and the gig economy.
Samantha Eddy Sociology Department, Boston College https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3521-2444

Samantha Eddy is a doctoral candidate at Boston College. She graduated from Colby College with a joint BA in psychology and sociology. Her research focuses on inequality, gender, race, and media. Her most recent work on racecraft appeared in Humanities. Samantha's applied research on parental leave was presented during the Obama administration's "White House Summit on Working Families".
Isak Ladegaard Department of Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9480-551X

Isak Ladegaard is Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is interested in economic sociology, technology and social change, and crime and deviance. His work has appeared in Socio-Economic Review, Social Forces, and British Journal of Criminology. Ladegaard is currently in the final months of a four-year research project on digital markets for illegal goods and services, funded by the National Science Foundation.
Juliet B. Schor Department of Sociology, Boston College https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9635-1232

Juliet B. Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College. Her most recent book is After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back (University of California Press, September 2020). Her current research topics include the gig economy and the future of work, time use, and the drivers of carbon emissions.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11508

Keywords:

Airbnb, behavioral models, platform cooperative, gig economy, platform economy

Abstract

The platform economy has entered its second decade, and researchers are developing new theorizations of it as an economic form. One important feature is a heterogeneous labor force with respect to hours of work. In this paper, we identify another type of heterogeneity, which is the diversity of economic orientation of earners. Using in-depth interview data from 102 earners on three platforms (Airbnb, TaskRabbit, and StocksyUnited) we find that even within individual platforms, earners have different behavioral models. We have identified three — the maximizing homo economicus; sociologists’ relational homo socialis; and homo instrumentalis. We present evidence of these three types. We then discuss platform policies and how earner diversity aligns with their imperatives for growth.

References

Aneesh, A. (2009). Global Labor: Algocratic Modes of Organization. Sociological Theory, 27(4), 347–370. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9558.2009.01352.x

Beckert, J. (1996). What Is Sociological about Economic Sociology? Uncertainty and the Embeddedness of Economic Action. Theory and Society, 25(6), 803–840. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00159817

Beckert, J. (2003). Economic Sociology and Embeddedness: How Shall We Conceptualize Economic Action? Journal of Economic Issues, 37(3), 769–787. https://doi.org/10.1080/00213624.2003.11506613

Block, F.L., & Somers, M.R. (2014). The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi’s Critique. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Camerer, C, Babcock, L., Lowenstein, G., & Thaler, R. (1997). Labor Supply of New York City Cab Drivers: One Day At A Time. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112(2), 407–441. https://doi.org/10.1162/003355397555244

Cameron, L.D. (2018). Making out While Driving: Control, Coordination, and Its Consequences in Algorithmic Work. Wharton Ideas Lab. https://ideas.wharton.upenn.edu/research/boss-algorithm/

Caplin, A., Dean, M., & Martin D. (2011). Search and Satisficing. American Economic Review, 101(7), 2899–2922. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.101.7.2899

Chen, L., Mislove, A., & Wilson, C. (2015). Peeking Beneath the Hood of Uber. Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Conference on Internet Measurement Conference – IMC ’15 (pp. 495–508). Tokyo, Japan: ACM Press.

Cullen, Z., & Farronato, C. (2018). Outsourcing Tasks Online: Matching Supply and Demand on Peer-to-Peer Internet Platforms. Management Science. Informs. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.3730

Davis, G.F. (2016a). The Vanishing American Corporation: Navigating the Hazards of a New Economy. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Kohler.

Davis, G.F. (2016b). What Might Replace the Modern Corporation?: Uberization and the Web Page Enterprise. Seattle University Law Review, 39, 501–515. http://webuser.bus.umich.edu/gfdavis/Papers/Davis_SULR_2016.pdf

Dobbin, F.A. (2007). Economic Sociology. In C.D. Bryant & D.L. Peck (Eds.), Twenty-First Century Sociology: A Reference Handbook (pp. 319–331). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

van Doorn, N., & Badger, A. (2020). Platform Capitalism’s Hidden Abode: Producing Data Assets in the Gig Economy. Platform Capitalism’s Hidden Abode. Antipode, 52(5), 1475–1495. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12641

Dubal, V. (2017). Wage-Slave or Entrepreneur? Contesting the Dualism of Legal Worker Categories. California Law Review, 105, 65–126. https://doi.org/10.15779/Z38M84X

Einav, L., Farronato, C., & Levin, J. (2016). Peer-to-Peer Markets. Annual Review of Economics, 8(1), 615–635. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-080315-015334

Fitzmaurice, C.J., Ladegaard, I., Attwood-Charles, W., Cansoy, M., Carfagna, L.B., Schor, J.B., & Wengronowitz, R. (2020). Domesticating the Market: Moral Exchange and the Sharing Economy. Socio-Economic Review, 18(1), 81–102. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwy003

Folbre, N. (2001). The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values. New York, NY: New Press.

Fridman, D. (2020). This Is a Handicraft: Valuation, Morality and the Social Meanings of Payments for Psychoanalysis.

Grabher, G., & van Tuijl, E. (2020). Uber-Production: From Global Networks to Digital Platforms. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 52(5), 1005–1016. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X20916507

Granovetter, M.S. (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360–1380. https://doi.org/10.1086/225469

Griesbach, K., Reich, A., Elliott-Negri, L., & Milkman, R. (2019). Algorithmic Control in Platform Food Delivery Work. Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, 5, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023119870041

Horton, J.J., & Zeckhauser, R.J. (2016). Owning, Using and Renting: Some Simple Economics of the “Sharing Economy”. NBER Working Paper, 22029. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2730850

Jensen, M.C., & Meckling, W.H. (1976). Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure. Journal of Financial Economics, 3(4), 305–360. https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-405X(76)90026-X

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Kalleberg, A.L. (2013). Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious Employment Systems in the United States, 1970s to 2000s. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Kenney, M., & Zysman, J. (2019). Work and Value Creation in the Platform Economy. In S.P. Vallas & A. Kovalainen (Eds.), Work and Labor in the Digital Age (pp. 13–41). Vol. 33, Research in the Sociology of Work. Binkley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Kornberger, M., Pflueger, D., & Mouritsen, J. (2017). Evaluative Infrastructures: Accounting for Platform Organization. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 60, 79–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2017.05.002

Ladegaard, I., Ravenelle, A., & Schor, J.B. (2018). Provider Vulnerability in the Sharing Economy. Unpublished paper, Boston College.

Leidner, Robin. 1993. Fast Food, Fast Talk. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Manriquez, M. (2019). The Uberization of the Labor Market: A Case Study of Monterrey, Mexico. Research in the Sociology of Work. https://www.ilpc.org.uk/Portals/7/2018/Documents/PaperUpload/ILPC2018paper-MarianaManriquez_ILPC2018_20180228_050520.pdf

PEW Research Center. (2016a). Gig Work, Online Selling and Home Sharing. Pew Research Center: Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping the World. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2016/11/PI_2016.11.17_Gig-Workers_FINAL.pdf

PEW Research Center. (2016b). Shared, Collaborative and On Demand: The New Digital Economy. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/05/19/the-new-digital-economy/

Ravenelle, A.J. (2017). Sharing Economy Workers: Selling, Not Sharing. Cambridge Journal Of Regions, Economy And Society, 10(2), 281–295. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsw043

Ravenelle, A.J. (2019). Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Robinson, H.C. (2017). Making a Digital Working Class: Uber Drivers in Boston, 2016–2017. Thesis: Ph.D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113946

Rosenblat, A., & Stark, L. (2016). Algorithmic Labor and Information Asymmetries: A Case Study of Uber’s Drivers. International Journal of Communication, 10, 3758–3784. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/4892/1739

Schor, J.B., & Vallas, S. (2021). The Sharing Economy: Rhetoric and Reality. Annual Review of Sociology, 47. Forthcoming.

Schor, J.B., Attwood-Charles,W., Cansoy, M., Carfagna, L.B., Eddy, S., Fitzmaurice, C.J., Ladegaard, I., & Wengronowitz, R. (2020a). After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Schor, J.B., Attwood-Charles, W., Cansoy, M., Ladegaard, I., & Wengronowitz, R. (2020b). Dependence and Precarity in the Platform Economy. Theory and Society, 49, 833–861. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09408-y

Schor, J.B., & Cansoy, M. (2019). The Sharing Economy. In F.F. Wherry & I. Woodward (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Consumption (pp. 51–74). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Simon, H.A. (1957). Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision Making Processes in Administratiive Organization. New York: MacMillan.

Srnicek, N. (2016). Platform Capitalism. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

Sundararajan, A. (2016). The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Vallas, S.P., & Schor, J.B. (2020). What Do Platforms Do? Understanding the Gig Economy. Annual Review of Sociology, 46, 273–294. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-121919-054857

Watkins, E.A., & Stark, D. (2018). The Möbius Organizational Form: Make, Buy, Cooperate, or Co-Opt? Sociologica, 12(1), 65–80. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/8364

Weil, D. (2014). The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad for So Many and What Can Be Done to Improve It. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Zelizer, V.A. (2012). How I Became a Relational Economic Sociologist and What Does That Mean? Politics & Society, 40(2), 145–174. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0032329212441591

Zelizer, V.A. (2013). Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Homines Diversi: Heterogeneous Earner Behaviors in the Platform Economy

Authors

DOI:

Keywords:

Abstract

References

Downloads

Published

Versions

How to Cite

Issue

Section

License

Information

Make a Submission

Current Issue