The Digital Market for Local Services: A One-Night Stand for Workers? an Example from the on-Demand Economy

This case study provides a snapshot on the dynamics in the digital market for locally provided personal services. Based on a case study for a Belgium platform with 14,113 identified workers and 9,459 posted tasks the findings suggest that the intermediation is currently inefficient. Only a limited share of the tasks are being completed, albeit the fairly limited difference between the completed and not-completed tasks. Moreover, just a small part of the workers are performing the completed tasks. The average earnings per hour on the platform are in most cases above the minimum wage and even the median wage in the offline market. The limited number of hours currently completed are making it nevertheless no alternative to a conventional job. Besides the conventional determinants of the earnings of workers (e.g. gender, age, occupation, etc.), the characteristics and evaluation mechanism of the platform have a large influence on the distribution of the tasks and earnings.