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Ride-sharing companies have been reshaping the structure and practice of ride-hailing work. At the same time, studies have been showing mixed driver experiences on the platform while many of the drivers are working part-time. In this research, we seek to understand why drivers on this platform are working part-time, how this impacts their view of the platform, and what this means for more accurately evaluating the design of these platforms. To investigate this question, we focused on situating ride-sharing in the lives and constellation of gigs that drivers maintain. We collected 53 survey responses and conducted 10 semi-structured interviews with drivers to probe these questions. We found that the extent that drivers categorize themselves as part-time is less about the number of hours worked and more about how dependent they are on ride-sharing income. The level of this dependency seemed to heavily influence how they interacted with the platform and their attitudes towards difficulties faced. It seemed to us that in some ways that the design or functioning of the platform almost pushed users towards working part-time. We discuss the importance of taking these different types of workers and their situations into consideration when evaluating the design and usability of these platforms.

In recent years, the peer-to-peer economy has grown exponentially, particularly in the ride-sharing sector. This growth has been accompanied by a muddying between the sharing and gig economy, and it has become unclear when an activity is sharing a resource vs. providing a service. To unpack this difference, we studied two successful carpooling groups (university students traveling home and commuting among professionals), which we contrast with previous literature on ride-hailing apps (e.g., Uber). The two communities that we studied differ in that: professionals, had more routine ride-sharing needs based on their commute; and students, arranged rides to return home for school breaks or long weekends. We detail how common needs and backgrounds impacted how carpoolers treated each other. Leveraging these findings, we outline design paths for both the sharing and gig economies to better realize the ideas of the sharing economy.

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