Profiling and Work Patterns of Gig Workers: Online Platform Data and Survey Analytics

Öz

Existing literature indicates that social backgrounds influence occupational choices, making them a crucial consideration for economic and human capital policies. The gig work has emerged as a popular alternative form of labor, with individuals leveraging technologies to seek and perform tasks. Gig workers play a vital role in advancing socio-economic agendas in many countries, prompting the introduction of various policies to nurture the ecosystem. Given its novelty, research on the characteristics of gig workers remains limited. With big data and machine learning analytics, it is now possible to integrate traditional approaches with new techniques in research. In this study, we aim to investigate the gig workforce by pursuing two objectives: to identify the profiles and job-seeking patterns of gig workers and to determine their work and earning behaviors within a selected segment of the gig economy. We employ a combination of data analytics and empirical surveys, focusing on data from Malaysia. Specifically, this study examined over 400,000 user profiles on the nation’s gig economy platform eRezeki via unsupervised machine learning (clustering) and association rule mining to unveil behavioral and demographic patterns. K-means clustering divided gig workers into groups according to their demographic and skill traits, and association rule mining indicated frequent job preference and income patterns related to user attributes. A further 300 Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, and Putrajaya delivery riders were also given guided questionnaires to complement and validate the platform data. This study contributes in two ways. It enhances the understanding of the talent profiles of gig workers in relation to national strategies for the gig economy. Furthermore, it illustrates the potential and complementary roles of data mining and empirical surveys in conducting research. We discuss several implications for future research.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• profiles
• work patterns
• gig workers
• big data
• survey

Kaynakça

1. Abdul Rahim, A. F., Yaacob, N. A., Mohd Noor, R., Najid, N. A., & Zulkifli, N. (2021). Strengthening the gig economy: Future of digital labor workforce platform post-covid- 19. Gading Journal for Social Sciences, 24(4), 17-26. google scholar
2. Ajunwa. (2020). Race, Labor, and the Future of Work Oxford Handbook of Race and Law, Eds. Emily Houh, Khiara Bridges, Devon Carbado. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3670785 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3670785 google scholar
3. Ashford, S. J., Caza, B. B. and Reid, E. M. (2018). From surviving to thriving in the gig economy: A research agenda for individuals in the new world of work. Research in Organizational Behavior, 38, 23-41. google scholar
4. Auguste, D., Roll, S., & Despard, M. (2024). Democratizing the economy or introducing Economic risk? Gig work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Occupations, 51(4), 550-606. google scholar
5. Benbrahim, Souhila & Chaouche, Saloua & Toumache, & Rachid. (2022). Countries' economic segmentation using k-means clustering for the year 2021. 9, 512-528. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22728752.v1 google scholar
6. BHEUU JPM (Legal Affairs Division, Prime Minister’s Department) (2024) National Baseline Assessment on Business and Human Rights in Malaysia. Accessed at: https://globalnap.org google scholar
7. Blalock Jr, H. M., & Hansen, W. L. (1968). The American occupational structure. American Sociological Review, 33(2). google scholar
8. Brown, P., Lauder, H., & Cheung, S. Y. (2020). The death of human capital?: Its failed promise and how to renew it in an age of disruption. Oxford University Press. google scholar

9. Brown, S., Kelly, P., & Phillips, S. K. (2024). Informal economies and informal workers in Global Capitalism. In Informal Workers and a Political Economy of Lifelong Learning: Provocations from the Margins of Global Capitalism (pp. 1-20). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. google scholar
10. Buchak, G. (2024). Financing the gig economy. The Journal of Finance, 79(1), 219-256. google scholar
11. Butschek, S., Amor, R. G., Kampkötter, P., & Sliwka, D. (2022). Motivating gig workers: Evidence from a field experiment. Labor economics, 75, 102105. google scholar
12. Bynner, J. and Parsons, S. (2002). Social exclusion and the transition from school to work: The case of young people not in education, employment, or training (NEET). J Vocat Behav, 60(2), 289-309. google scholar
13. Celestin, M., & Vanitha, N. (2021). The gig economy and its effects on personal finance. Indo American Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Review, 5(2), 39-46. google scholar
14. Chesters, J. (2024). Unemployment or Precarious Employment: Tough Choices for the Young Workers in the Twenty-First Century In Handbook of Children and Youth Studies (pp. 575-586). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. google scholar
15. Christie, N., & Ward, H. (2019). Health and safety risks for people who drive for work in the gig economy. . Journal of Transport & Health, 13, 115-127. google scholar
16. Claudiu, M. G., Iacubota, O. A. Maria, Z. (2018). An EU-level analysis of several youth unemployment related factors. Studies in Business and Economics, 13(3), 105-117. google scholar
17. Cushen, J. (2020). Financing the future of work: Who pays? In A. Wilkinson & M. Barry (Eds.), The Future of Work and Employment (pp. 103–118). Edward Elgar Publishing. google scholar
18. Datta, N., Rong, C., S., S., Stinshoff, C., Iacob, N., Nigatu, N. S., Nxumalo, M., & Klimaviciute, L. (2023). Working Without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10986/40066 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.” Department of Statistics Malaysia. (2019). google scholar
19. De Stefano, V., & Aloisi, A. (2019). Fundamental labor rights, platform work and human Rights protection of non-standard workers. In the Research Handbook On Labor, Business and Human Rights Law (pp. 359-379). Edward Elgar Publishing. google scholar
20. Eagly, A. H. and Wood, W. (2012). Social role theory Handbook of theories of social psychology, 2, 458-476. google scholar
21. Ghorpade, Y., Abdur Rahman, A., & Yi, S. (2024). Informal Employment in Malaysia: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities for Reform (Eng^ lish). Retrieved from http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099022124104015011/P1810931e836170db184871b5fe7b37157c google scholar
22. Gussek, L., & Wiesche, M. (2022). The Gig Economy: Workers, Work, and Platform Perspective Wirtschaftsinformatik 2022 Proceedings, google scholar
23. Haque, F., & Dard, A. R. (2023). New Face of the Job Quality Challenge in India: Gig Worker Studies. Journal of Indonesian Applied Economics, 11(1), 101-109. google scholar
24. Heeks, R. (2017). Decent work and the digital gig economy: a developing country perspective on employment impacts and standards in online outsourcing, crownwork, etc. Development Informatics Working Paper, 71. google scholar
25. Helling, B. (April 28, 2021) Five Ways COVID-19 Changed Gig Work For Good. Forbes Business Council. https://www.forbes.com/councils/ forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/04/28/five-ways-covid- 19-changed-gig-work-for-good/ google scholar
26. Herod, A., & Lambert, R. (2016). Neoliberalism, precarious work and remaking the geography Of global capitalism. In Neoliberal capitalism and precarious work (pp. 1-36). Edward Elgar Publishing. google scholar
27. Hickson, J. (2024). Freedom, domination and the gig economy. New Political Economy, 29(2), 321-336. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467. 2023.2254712 google scholar
28. Holzer, H. J. and Neumark, D. (2000). Assessing affirmative action. Journal of Economic Literature, 38(3), 483–568. doi:10.1257/jel.38.3.483 google scholar
29. Howcroft, D., & Bergvall-Kåreborn, B. (2019). A typology of crownwork platforms Work, Employment and Society, 33(1), 21-38. google scholar
30. Hu, S., Hood, M., Creed, P. A., & Shen, X. (2022). The relationship between family socio-economic status and career outcomes: A life history perspective. Journal of Career Development, 49(3), 600-615. google scholar
31. Friedman, S., Laurison, D. and Miles, A. (2015). Breaking the ‘class’ ceiling? Social mobility into Britain’s elite occupations. The Sociological Review, 63(2), 259-289. google scholar
32. Huang, N., Burtch, G., Hong, Y., & Pavlou, P. A. (2020). Unemployment and worker participation in the gig economy: Evidence from an online labor market. Information Systems Research, 31(2), 431-448. google scholar
33. Jabagi, N., Croteau, A. M., Audebrand, L. K., & Marsan. (2019). Gig-workers’ motivation: thinking beyond carrots and sticks. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 34(4), 192-213. google scholar
34. Joo, B. A., & Shawl, S. (2021). COVID-19 pandemic and the rising gig economy: an emerging perspective. Global Economics Science, 16-23. google scholar
35. Kareem, M. A., & Hussein, I. J. (2019). The impact of human resource development on employee performance and organizational effectiveness. Management Dynamics in the Knowledge Economy, 7(3), 307-322. https://doi.org/10.25019/mdke/7.3.02. google scholar
36. Keith, M. G., Harms, P., & Tay, L. (2019). Mechanical Turk and the gig economy: Exploring differences between gig workers. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 34(4), 286-306. google scholar
37. Kenney, M., & Zysman, J. (2019). Work and value creation in the platform economy In Work and Labor in the Digital Age. Emerald Publishing Limited. google scholar
38. Kim, T. Y., Schuh, S. C., & Cai, Y. (2020). Person or job? Change in person‐job fit and its impact on employee work attitudes over time. Journal of Management Studies, 57(2), 287-313. google scholar
39. Kost, D., Fieseler, C., & Wong, S. I. (2020). Boundaryless careers in the gig economy: An oxymoron? Human Resource Management Journal, 30(1), 100-113. google scholar
40. Kristof, A. L. (1996). Person‐organization fit: An integrative review of its conceptualizations, measurement, and implications. Personnel Psychology, 49(1), 1-49. google scholar
41. Lane, M. (2020). Regulating platform work in the digital age. Going Digital Toolkit Policy Note. https://goingdigital.oecd.org/toolkitnotes/ regulating-platform-work-in-the- digital-age.pdf google scholar
42. Lensen, A. (2021). Mining feature relationships in data. In T. Hu, Lourenço, N., Medvet, E. (eds) (Ed.), Genetic Programming. EuroGP 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 12691). Springer, Cham. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-72812-0_16 google scholar
43. Li, Y., Zhao, L., Cao, C., & Yang, D. (2025). The double-edged sword effect of algorithmic transparency: An empirical study of gig workers’ work disengagement under algorithmic management. Information & Management, 62(2), 104100. doi:10.1016/j.im.2025.104100 google scholar
44. Ma, Z., Gong, Y., L., L., & Zhang, Y. (2022). Team-level high-performance work systems, self-efficacy and creativity: differential moderating roles of person–job fit and goal difficulty. In Strategic Human Resource Management and Organizational Effectiveness (pp. 254-287). Routledge. google scholar
45. McWha-Hermann, I., M., I., C., S. C., & Searle, R. (2023). Moving the boundaries of IO, or of work itself? Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 16(4), 504-507. google scholar
46. Mikalef, P., Boura, M., Lekakos, G., & Krogstie, J. (2019). Big data analytics and firm performance: Findings from a mixed-method approach Journal of business research, 98, 261-276. google scholar
47. Mitchell, J., Li, X., & Decker, P. (2021). Gig Workers’ Financial Confidence and Behavior. Global Journal of Accounting and Finance, 5(2), 88-105. htpps://10.47177/gjaf.05.02.2021.088 google scholar
48. Md Yusof, A. B., Arshad, M. M., & Ismail, I. A. (2022). Positive Youth Development through Gig Economy among Food Panda Delivery Services in Malacca, Malaysia International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 12(14). https://doi.org/ 10.6007/ijarbss/v12-i14/15979 google scholar
49. Montgomery, T., & Baglioni, S. (2022). Transformations of work in the era of the gig economy: Towards a new paradigm of worker autonomy or exploitation? In The Routledge Handbook of the Gig Economy (pp. 261-275). Routledge. google scholar
50. Muldoon, J., & Sun, P. (2024). The global gig economy: how transport platform companies adapt to regulatory challenges—a comparative analysis of six countries. Industrial Law Journal, 53(3), 481-504. https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwae010 google scholar
51. Mohd Soffian Lee, U. M. (2022, March). Gig ekonomi jadi alternatif rakyat jana pendapatan Baharu. Berita Harian. https://www.bharian. com.my/rencana/lain-lain/2022/03/929564/ekonomi-gig-jadi-alternatif-rakyat-jana-pendapatan-baharu google scholar
52. Osterman, P. (2022). How American adults obtain work skills: Results of a new national survey ILR Review, 75(3), 578-607. https://doi. org/10.1177/00197939211018191. google scholar
53. Park, I. J., & Hai, S. (2024). Person-organization fit, person-job fit and organizational commitment among hotel employees: the roles of positive affect and calling. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 36(3), 852-872. google scholar
54. Poon, T. C. (2019). Independent workers: Growth trends, categories, and employee relation implications in the emerging gig economy Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 31, 63-69. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10672-018-9318-8. google scholar
55. Qiao, S., Huang, G., & Yeh, A. G. O. (2023). Who are the gig workers? Evidence from mapping the residential locations of ride-hailing drivers using a big data approach. Cities, 132, 104112. google scholar
56. Rahman, H. A. (2021). The invisible cage: Workers’ reactivity to opaque algorithmic evaluations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 66(4), 945-988. google scholar
57. Ramesh, S., & Shobha, C. (2025). Unequal gigs: developing a scale to measure the socio- economic disparities among gig workers. Deci^ sion, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40622-025- 00422-6 google scholar
58. Reynolds, J., & Kincaid, R. (2023). Gig work and the pandemic: Looking for good pay from bad jobs during the COVID-19 crisis. Work and Occupations, 50(1), 60-96. google scholar
59. Smith, J. W. (2016). The Uber-all economy of the future. The Independent Review, 20(3), 383- 390. google scholar
60. Sudan, F. K. (2021). Technological Disruptions, Youth Unemployment, and Vocational Education Challenges in South Asia: A Short Report. Global Economics Science, 2(2), 80–97. https://doi.org/10.37256/ges.222021769 google scholar
61. Scroggins, W. A. (2008). The relationship between employee fit perceptions, job performance, and retention: Implications of perceived fit Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 20, 57-71. google scholar
62. Stanford, J. (2017). The resurgence of gig work: Historical and theoretical perspectives. The Economic and Labor Relations Review, 28(3), 382-401. google scholar
63. Steinberger, B. Z. (2017). Redefining employee in the gig economy: Shielding workers from the Uber model Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law, 23, 577. google scholar
64. Tan, P.-N., Steinbach, M., & Kumar, V. (2019). Introduction to data mining (2nd ed.). Pearson. google scholar
65. Tonidandel, S., King, E. B. and Cortina, J. M. (2018). Big data methods: Leveraging modern data analytic techniques to build organizational science. Organizational Research Methods, 21(3), 525-547. google scholar
66. Watson, G. P., Kistler, L. D., Graham, B. A., & Sinclair, R. R. (2021). Looking at the gig picture: Defining gig work and explaining profile differences in gig workers’ job demands and resources. . Group and Organization Management, 46(2), 327-361. google scholar
67. Webster, J. (2016). Microworkers of the gig economy: Separate and precarious. In New labor Forum (Vol. 25, pp. 56-64). CA: SAGE Publications. google scholar
68. Williams, P., McDonald, P., & Mayes, R. (2020). Recruitment in the gig economy: Attraction and selection on digital platforms The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 1-27. google scholar
69. Wu, D., & Huang, J. L. (2024). Gig work and gig workers: An integrative review and agenda for future research. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 45(2), 183-208. google scholar
70. Wulansari, A. D., Novianto, A., Keban, Y. T., & Hernawan, A. (2024). Hiding behind the platform: the myth of flexibility for gig workers in Indonesia. South East Asia Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/0967828x.2023.2292101 google scholar
71. Yang, L. Q., Che, H. and Spector, P. E. (2008). Job stress and well‐being: An examination from the view of person‐environment fit. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 81(3), 567-587. google scholar
72. Yaroshenko, O. M., Tkachenko, V. S., Puntus, D. A., Yakovleva, G. O., & Konopeltseva, O. O. (2024). Models of social protection for workers in the gig economy: Legal challenges and prospects. Science of Law, 2024(3), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.55284/sol.v2024i3.139 google scholar
73. Young, J. (2021). Gig Economy Penetration in Asia and Its Challenges Retrieved from https://bunnystudio.com/blog/gig-economy-penetration-in-asia/ google scholar
74. Yousef, M. (2024). Navigating the Gig Economy: Evolution, Economic Impact, and the Future Trends. In: Hamdan, A. (eds) Achieving Sustainable Business Through AI, Technology Education and Computer Science Studies in Big Data, vol. 159. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-71213-5_57 google scholar
75. Van Slageren, J., Herrmann, A. M., & Frenken, K. (2023). Is the online gig economy beyond National reach? A European analysis. Sociol Economic Review, 21(3), 1795-1821. google scholar
76. Zakariah Z, Janom N, Arshad NH. 2018. Low-income community as crowd worker for crowdsourcing: Issues, challenges, and future direction. International Journal of Engineering and Technology (UAE), 7(4), 65-70. google scholar
77. Zhang, P. (2025). Training for gig workers: a systematic review and research agenda. Learning Organization, 32(2), 149-168. google scholar
78. Zhang, C. (2022). Sharing economy: challenges for the labor market and the labor law in China and globally: a micro-comparative analysis of the EU, US, and Asia. European Business Organization Law Review, 23(4), 1025-1047. google scholar
79. Zulkifly, S. S. (2023). Work-related safety and health issues among food and parcel delivery riders. In International Business^New Insights on Changing Scenarios. IntechOpen. google scholar
80. Zurich. (2019). People protection: Insights on empowering an agile workforce. google scholar