Interpersonal transgressions and well-being in the gig economy: the buffering role of recovery among delivery workers

The Covid-19 pandemic reshaped urban mobility, exposing the precarity of essential services and delivery workers’ paradoxical roles. This qualitative study investigates how delivery workers in China navigated stringent lockdowns, specifically exploring the complex interplay between their enforced mobility and their construction of masculine identities. We inductively conceptualise the Mobility-masculinity Nexus, demonstrating how mobility serves simultaneously as a critical resource for asserting identity and a site of exploitation within the gig economy. Findings reveal three distinct yet interconnected masculine archetypes—the explorer, the rebel, and the hero—forged through their engagement with urban spaces, platform algorithms, and societal expectations. While their unique mobility during the pandemic temporarily granted them urban visibility and a sense of urban citizenship, it also underscored the precariousness of their labour, subjecting them to pervasive algorithmic control and heightened health risks. This paper contributes to the growing body of literature on mobilities, platform labour, and masculinity, offering a nuanced understanding of how movement, labour, and gender intersect in platform-mediated urban economies. We also raise crucial questions about the equitable distribution of mobility rights and the systemic inequalities faced by migrant workers, providing timely insights for policymakers aiming to foster more just and inclusive urban development.

BackgroundThe digital economy has spurred gig work, especially in food delivery, which grew during COVID-19. However, gig workers face occupational hazards like traffic accidents, poor ergonomics, and unsafe conditions, leading to work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). Studies show high rates of back and neck pain among delivery riders due to physical strain, repetitive motions, and long hours. WMSDs reduce productivity and increase healthcare costs. This review examines WMSD prevalence, risk factors, and related issues like accidents and violence among food delivery workers.MethodsWe searched for relevant articles up to June 2025 from PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Two independent reviewers extracted data from the selected studies, including baseline information, outcomes, and prevalence of WMSDs. All data analyses were performed using R version 4.3.3.ResultsAfter removing 1,013 duplicate records, we retained 1,279 for screening. Following a thorough review, we identified 23 eligible entries for inclusion in our study. As per our analysis, delivery workers face high injury prevalence: lower back (43%), shoulder (39%), neck (30%), upper back (24%), and RTA (25%). Risk factors include gig economy systemic vulnerabilities, prolonged static postures, vibration exposure, open-door vehicles, and dangerous traffic practices. Different forms of violence (physical, verbal, and psychological) affected delivery workers, while exploitation and discrimination were particularly evident among minorities.ConclusionThis review demonstrated a high burden of WMSDs among delivery workers, who face serious hazards like injuries, accidents, and violence due to precarious gig economy conditions, time pressures, and poor safety measures. This study provides the first quantitative pooled estimates of WMSD prevalence among food delivery workers, along with an additional narrative synthesis of traffic accidents and workplace violence.

Sharing within the gig economy: The use of shared e-bikes by on-demand platform-based instant meal delivery workers in Paris

Gig Workers are individuals who take on short-term, flexible jobs often mediated through digital platforms. This type of work includes roles like Drivers for ride-share services like Uber or Lyft, or delivery workers for Zomato or Swiggy, and Gig workers are mainly employed by big corporations like Swiggy, Zomato, Uber, Ola, Rapido, fiverr, upwork inc., lyft, TaskRabbit, Airbnb, toptal, 99designs, amazon flex, crowdspring, doordash, Etsy, Instacart, perpleperhour and more. Gig workers face many difficulties and problem in their life. They earn below minimum wage . Gig workers are unaware about schemes that provided by government like Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-Dhan (PM-SYM), Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY), Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY) and etc . ?The gig economy accounts to 1.5% of the total working class or the labour class in the country? . A study says that 7.7 million working people were engaged in the gig economy and is expected to rise to 23.5 million by 2029-2030, generating up to 4% of the country's income. The government of India recently added a separate section in the Code on Social Security (2020) in name called 'gig economy' but the code has still not come into effect . This paper will focus on the existing labour laws and social security frameworks, code on social security 2020 is sufficient for Gig workers, does social security act 2008 support for gig workers and highlighting their inadequacies in protecting gig workers? rights. The Researcher, through this article, tried to identify the problems faced by gig workers in relation to labour welfare in the gig economy. Further the researcher provides appropriate suggestion by recommendation to improve livelihood of Gig workers.

This article analyses the working conditions of women on food delivery digital platforms given that women’s experiences and gender inequality in this sector has been under-explored. Drawing on original survey and interview data on platform-based food delivery workers, we deploy an intersectional lens to explore the ways in which women, especially mothers and other caregivers, experience working in food delivery. Likewise, we analyse inequalities in opportunities and working conditions, and experiences between women and men delivery workers, focusing on income, motivations to join the sector, work environment, and occupational risks. The article finally concludes by providing some recommendations to policymakers to address and guarantee decent working conditions to workers in these new forms of employment.

Purpose This study explores how organizational identification (OI) bonds develop and evolve over time in the context of platform-mediated delivery work, an increasingly prevalent form of gig work. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts a longitudinal and phenomenological approach. Data were gathered through overt participant observation and semi-structured interviews, comprising an initial recruiting session and four waves of interviews conducted over seven months, yielding a total of 62 interviews with 19 delivery workers. Findings The findings reveal that while platforms attempt to foster OI through various mechanisms, the interplay of algorithmic management, inconsistent organizational practices (notably via the support line acting as an human resources [HR] channel) and platform governance frequently erodes these identification bonds and drives an OI deconstruction process, leading to shifts toward non-positive forms of identification. The study highlights how these states emerge and evolve over time in response to organizational practices and workers' lived experiences. Originality/value By unpacking the dynamic processes of OI development, erosion and rejection in a gig work context, this research extends OI theory to precarious and algorithmically managed work environments. It offers a nuanced perspective on non-positive forms of identification: ambivalent, disidentification, de-identification and neutral identification, thereby contributing to both human resource management practice in platform work and broader organizational psychology debates on the nature of identification in transient and precarious employment relationships.

As China’s platform economy grows, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has sought to extend its organizational presence into emerging labor sectors. This article examines how subdistrict-level authorities implement Party-building among delivery workers, a group officially categorized as part of the ‘new employment group’ (新就业群体). Drawing on internal Party reports from one district in a Chinese megacity and interviews conducted with district and subdistrict officials, this article details how delivery drivers are enrolled into Party-led initiatives. These efforts reflect a broader governance strategy of co-optation, in which state-linked actors incorporate decentralized labor into formal structures to enhance social integration and local policy implementation. Although platform companies are viewed as critical intermediaries, their participation remains limited and contested. The article contributes to the study of governance innovation by showing how Party-building adapts to the challenges posed by mobile, flexible labor and highlights the evolving role of subdistrict governments in coordinating with platform companies and community actors.

This paper examines the modern award application made in April 2021 by Menulog Pty Ltd., an app-based food-delivery platform, and charters the subsequent process which was handled by the Fair Work Commission, Australia's main industrial relations tribunal. This, ultimately unsuccessful, application for a new modern award was part of an organisational strategy that would have seen Menulog treat its delivery workers as employees rather than contractors, thereby deviating from established norms in this part of the gig economy. By invoking this rarely used provision of the Fair Work Act 2009, the platform set in motion an institutional process that would have led to gig work becoming part of the Australian industrial relations systems. In the paper, we analyse and contextualise the progression of Menulog's application using a qualitative socio-legal documentary analysis, drawing upon institutional work as our theoretical lens. We contribute to pluralist industrial relations debates by highlighting the challenges that industrial relations systems and actors face in bringing neoliberalising work practices like gig work into the fold. Moreover, we show how the actions of incumbent actors and the statutory responsibilities of the Fair Work Commission shaped the process and contributed to a largely unsatisfactory outcome for all involved.

Critics of digitally mediated labour platforms (often called the “sharing” or “gig economy”) have focused on the character and extent of the control exerted by these platforms over both workers and customers, and in particular on the precarizing impact on the workers on whose labor the services depend. Less attention has been paid to the specifically spatial character of the forms of work targeted by mobile digital platforms. The production and maintenance of urban social space has always been dependent, to a large degree, on work that involves the crossing of spatial boundaries - particularly between public and private spaces, but also crossing spaces segregated by class, race, and gender. Delivery workers, cabdrivers, day labourers, home care providers, and similar boundary-crossers all perform spatial work: the work of moving between and connecting spaces physically, experientially, and through representation. Spatial work contributes to the production and reproduction of social space; it is also productive of three specific, though interrelated, products: physical movement from one place to another; the experience of this movement; and the articulation of these places, experiences, and movements with visions of society and of the social. Significantly, it is precisely such spatial work, and its products, which mobile digital platforms seek most urgently to transform. Drawing on several recent studies of “ridesharing” (or soft cab) labour platforms, I interrogate the impact of digital mediation on the actual practices involved in spatial work. I argue that the roll-out of digital labour platforms needs to be understood in terms of a struggle over the production of social space.

The development of technology and the flexibility to work in non-traditional ways has led to the emergence of task-based gig workers and this trend has been spreading across Japan. However, the ambiguity of the legal position on app-based on-demand gig workers has led to inequalities in labour relations. This study examines the labour union actions against the employers and related bodies of the online food delivery platform Uber Eats Union to determine the current status and potential for bargaining. The union has requested collective bargaining on the Uber side, but all requests have been rejected. The admissibility of the union’s actions to improve industrial relations depended on two points: the application of the worker character in the law to the delivery workers and the demand for support from other institutions. In terms of the law, the recognition of the worker status of delivery workers is a significant step towards collective bargaining with firms. The active work of the Uber Eats Union could lead to the formation of new labour unions on other platforms and the empowerment of platform workers. Based on Japan’s experience, this paper also draws some lessons for Malaysia’s gig economy.

The smooth functioning of the gig economy relies on gig workers’ local execution of tasks assigned by global platforms like Uber. Within this broader workforce, gig drivers (e.g., rideshare and delivery workers) draw on their local knowledge – information and skills specific to a particular region – to navigate and optimize routes. Building on a substantial body of research on gig work, this study turns attention to how gig drivers develop and deploy knowledge practices within the gig economy infrastructure. To address this, we analyzed 25 semi-structured interviews, revealing how drivers’ knowledge practices enable them to adapt platform systems to local conditions, develop algorithmic-local knowledge by integrating insights about platform behavior and market dynamics, and strategically regulate knowledge exchange with peers. We discuss how such knowledge practices play a critical role in localizing platform work, bridging the gaps between gig platforms’ global standards and local conditions.

Burning gig, rewarding risk: Effects of dual exposure to incentive structure and heat condition on risky driving among on-demand food-delivery motorcyclists in Kaohsiung, Taiwan

As the gig economy expands, workers like food delivery riders and freight drivers face high risks, low stability, and inadequate work-related injury insurance. Using 2025 data, this study explores how platform insurance affects their retention intention, incorporating occupational safety's mediating role and industry risk differences. A survey of food delivery, freight, and domestic service workers, paired with statistical and regression analyses, tested relevant models. Results show insurance significantly boosts retention, with occupational safety fully mediating this link; the impact is stronger in high-risk industries. This study enriches gig economy labor security theory and guides platforms and governments in refining policies.

The re-organization of work via digital labor platforms has introduced fully flexible work schedules in courier services such as food delivery. However, little is known about how working activity on such platforms may vary over time. This study examines the working time patterns of a full population of food delivery workers (N = 17,641) at the Danish food delivery platform Wolt over 6 years (2017-2022). It identifies three worker segments: Dabblers (few hours and short part-time over a few months), Temporaries(part-time for around 6 months), and Regulars (long part-time and full-time for 1-2 years). The results show that despite being a numerically smaller segment, Regulars increasingly perform the largest share of working hours. The article discusses implications of diversified working time patterns and uneven workloads across the three segments.

The promises of flexible work and instant deliveries promoted through food delivery apps are one of the latest trends within the “gig economy” and lay at the forefront of smart city agendas. This article focuses on the work undertaken by Deliveroo couriers to investigate how they embody, negotiate, and contest the “smartness” of the platform. Drawing on ethnographic research in London and Manchester, analysis of internal online communication, and interviews with workers, the article examines how competing understandings of “smartness” emerge in response to algorithmic management in the workplace. This paper conceptualizes two distinctive yet overlapping attitudes among couriers—entrepreneurialism and solidarity—and discusses their implications for the future of platform work.