The Impact of Economic and Behavioral Drivers on Gig Economy Workers

Operations, Information, and Decisions Department; Faculty Advisers: Gad Allon and Maxime Cohen

In today’s ever-expanding “gig economy”, independent workers can freely choose when to work as well as seamlessly switch between multiple platforms that offer different incentives. Companies need to ensure that their services appeal not only to customers (demand) but also to service providers (supply). This poses an enormous challenge in planning and committing to a service capacity, during both peak hours (when demand is high), and off-peak times when only a handful of workers are needed. How can firms recruit the right number of on-demand workers at the right time? To address this question, it is important to first understand: How do gig workers make working decisions? Our project is in collaboration with a ride-hailing company with the goal to not only improve the way of predicting the number of drivers who will work during a given day and time, but also understand how to better incentivize them, as a way to match supply and demand.