Research On Internal Competition Mechanism And External Effect In Gig Economy

With the development of Internet,people are getting involved more and more in the Gig economy.Based on computer technology,the Gig economic platform connects the supply side of the resource with the demand side and promotes the redistribution of resources between them at a lower transaction cost.Typical Gig economic application platforms include online accommodation resource sharing platform,like Xiaozhu and Airbnb;online medical resource sharing platforms,such as Good Doctor Online and Chun Yu Doctor.These application platforms have attracted a large number of users,innovating and supplementing the original methods of resource allocation,which have a tremendous impact on people's daily life and business operations.As an emerging business model,the Gig economy certainly has many problems,such as legality issues and some negative impacts on society.Therefore,there are still some controversies in the academic and industry regarding the emergence of the Gig economy.This article will answer some key questions from the internal and external lens of the Gig economy.Firstly,based on the large-scale data of the online medical resource sharing platform,we explored the signalling effects of the pricing and offering free service of the resource supplier facing the information asymmetry problem in the Gig economy.For the former(pricing mechanism),we find that the seller's pricing strategy as a quality signal will positively affect their final benefit under the condition of incomplete information.Futhermore,the perceived quality of the users has a mediating effect on this relationship.For the latter(offering free service),we found a positive signal effect of providing free services on their final income,especially for those sellers with lower professional titles,less experience in the platform and higher pricing.This implies that offering free services can help sellers build online reputation,highlight their service quality,and make up for some offline defects.Subsequently,we collected data from two online leading home accommodation sharing platforms in China and the United States: Xiaozhu and Airbnb,to study the external impact of the Gig economy,including the impact on the popularity and the visitor experience of local tourist attractions,and the impact on local employment and its heterogeneity.For the former(local tourist attractions),this paper finds that the entry of home sharing will increase the popularity of local tourist attractions through the capacity expansion effect of its accommodation supply.Meanwhile,it will enhance the experience of local tourists through its localized hosts' interactive service.In addition,the hotel has a dilution effect on this promotion.For the latter(local employment),we found that the entry of online family accommodation sharing will promote the employment rate of the local population,especially for those with lower education,lower household income and male population.Using dataset of two typical Gig economic applications with econometric method,we identified how sellers send signals by the pricing strategy and offering free services to compete in the Gig economy facing internal information asymmetry;and the spillover effects on local tourist attractions and local employment.This paper enrichs the existing literature on Gig economic development,through four aspects: considering the information asymmetry within the Gig economy,ie market incompleteness;the signalling mechanism of pricing and offering free services;capacity expansion and substitution effects on local tourist attractions;business expansion effect on local market.Moreover,this study contributes to policy makers and relevant practitioners.Business operators can have a better understanding on their operating mechanism and make rational use of their own advantages to maximize revenue.For local market planners,they can encourage and co-work with local Gig economic managers through some policy support,because the local market will benefit from it,based on our results which indicats that Gig economy is actively promoting the local market.