Understanding Ride-Sharing in On-Demand Platforms: Stakes, Dependency, and Sharing
Open Access
- Author:
- Ma, Ning
- Graduate Program:
- Informatics
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 01, 2020
- Committee Members:
- Benjamin Vincent Hanrahan, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Benjamin Vincent Hanrahan, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
John M Carroll, Committee Member
Daniel Susser, Committee Member
Michael Maffie, Outside Member
Mary Beth Rosson, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- Sharing
Gig Work
On-demand Platforms
Uber
Stakeholder
Algorithmic Management - Abstract:
- % Place abstract below. The sharing economy has reshaped the way of supporting exchanges between workers and consumers in various industries. As these platforms support a large amount of temporary, gig work for millions of workers, there has been mixed sentiment on the work experience, and a muddied understanding of what makes it a gig versus sharing. Focusing on ride-sharing, this dissertation aims to inform the future of ride-sharing work through understanding how platform support work in different ride-sharing contexts while situating ride-sharing work under the broader sharing economy. To further enunciate these issues, I took a qualitative approach to understand the role of ride-sharing platforms through drivers' experience and comparing these experiences in ride-hailing with carpool. Specifically, I present three studies in this dissertation, the findings of workers' experience and the broader implications of these studies. Despite numerous efforts to understand the impacts of these platforms and their algorithms on drivers, how to better serve and support drivers with these platforms remains an open challenge. In study 1, I framed ride-hailing work through the lens of Stakeholder Theory to highlight drivers' position in the workplace, which helps inform the design of a more ethical and effective platform. To this end, I analyzed drivers' forum discussions about their lived experiences of working with the ride-hailing platform. From this study, I identify and discuss the impact of the stakes that drivers have in relation to both the Uber corporation and their passengers, and look at how these stakes impact both the platform and drivers' practices. Studies have been showing mixed driver experiences on the platform while many of the drivers are working part-time. In this study, I tried to understand why drivers work part-time, how this impacts their view of the platform, and what this means for more accurately evaluating the design of these platforms. To investigate this question, I focused on situating ride-hailing in the lives and constellation of gigs that drivers maintain. I collected 53 survey responses and conducted 10 semi-structured interviews with drivers to probe these questions. I found that the extent that drivers categorize themselves as part-time is less about the number of hours worked and more about how dependent they are on ride-sharing income. The level of this dependency seemed to heavily influence how they interacted with the platform and their attitudes towards difficulties faced. It seemed to me that in some ways that the design or functioning of the platform almost pushed users towards working part-time. I discuss the importance of taking these different types of workers and their situations into consideration when evaluating the design and usability of these platforms. As the continued growth in the sharing economy, it has become unclear when an activity is sharing a resource vs.~providing a service. To unpack this difference, I studied two successful carpooling groups (university students traveling home and commuting among professionals), which we contrast with previous literature on ride-hailing apps (e.g.,~Uber). The two communities that I studied differ in that: professionals, had more routine ride-sharing needs based on their commute; and students, arranged rides to return home for school breaks or long weekends. In this study, I detail how common needs and backgrounds impacted how carpoolers treated each other. Leveraging these findings, I outline design paths for both the sharing and gig economies to better realize the ideas of the sharing economy. Overall, this dissertation aims to inform the understanding of ride-sharing work under the context of sharing economy. In presenting workers' experiences under different platform context, I look to 1) provide concrete recommendations for worker-centered design efforts in future platforms; 2) inform strategies in designing for a fair and equitable workplace through workers' relationship with customers.