Platform-Mediated Food Delivery Work

Abstract

CSCW holds a valuable set of notions and tools for future granular inquiry into the work practice on food delivery platforms and pertinent questions from the field of food delivery resonate with research agendas within CSCW. This argument is based on a synthetic literature review that identifies characteristics of food delivery work and connects them to previous scholarship within CSCW. With few exceptions, the food delivery workers in the papers included are typically young, male and of immigrant background. The work practice the papers describe typically relies on algorithmic management, flexible scheduling, pay-per-delivery, and while food delivery workers work solitarily, workers repeatedly organize in both formal and informal groups. Finally, the review shows that while these characteristics are common, the local environment where the work is done has a significant impact on the workers' practice, resulting in meaningful differences between places and platforms that should be considered. The discussion brings forth salient issues and outlines two alleys of future work.