Risks and Rewards of Online Gig Work At the Global Margins

* Graham, M., Lehdonvirta, V., Wood, A., Barnard, H., Hjorth, I., Simon, D. P. (2017). The Risks and Rewards of Online Gig Work At The Global Margins. Oxford: Oxford Internet Institute, 2017.

URL = https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/publications/gigwork.pdf

"A report to help platform operators improve their positive impact, help workers improve their situations, and prompt policy makers and stakeholders to revisit online gig work regulation."

Description

"Online gig work is becoming increasingly important to workers living in low- and middle-income countries. Our multi-year and multi-method research project shows that online gig work brings about rewards such as potential higher incomes and increased worker autonomy, but also risks such as social isolation, lack of work–life balance, discrimination, and predatory intermediaries. We also note that online gig work platforms mostly operate outside regulatory and normative frameworks that could benefit workers.

This report summarises the ways in which observed risks materialise in the market, highlighting responses from a 456-respondent survey and stories from 152 interviews. The report’s central question is whether online gig work has any development potentials at the world’s economic margins.

Its motive is to help platform operators to improve their positive impact, to help workers to take action to improve their situations, and to prompt policy makers and stakeholders interested in online gig work to revisit regulation as it applies to workers, clients, and platforms in their respective countries.

This report is based on a three-year investigation conducted by researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) at the University of Oxford and the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) at the University of Pretoria. Professor Mark Graham (Primary Investigator), Professor Vili Lehdonvirta (Co-investigator), and Professor Helena Barnard (Co-investigator) led the project, with significant contributions from Dr. Isis Hjorth and Dr. Alex J. Wood. David Sutcliffe and David Peter Simon designed the report. All material in this report is released under a CC BY-NC-ND licence. The content of this report is available to be shared freely."