Discrimination on Sharing Economy Platforms: A Systematic Review of Cases and Coping Strategies

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic review of empirical research on the phenomenon of discrimination on sharing economy platforms. Sharing platforms such as Airbnb, Uber, and BlaBlaCar have recently become notorious as hotbeds of digital discrimination. Difficult to detect and deter, digital discrimination describes the state when an online transaction is influenced by the race, gender, age, or other non-business characteristics of providers or consumers. Four key themes emerged from our analysis: forms of discrimination, domains (industries), outcomes and coping strategies. There is strong evidence of bias on both the demand side (consumers, guests) and the supply side (providers, hosts) and across domains such as accommodation sharing, ridesharing, skills sharing, and peer-to-peer lending. We propose a framework to organize the existing studies and guide future research and practical solutions to reduce inequality on online platforms.