Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-v2bm5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T06:03:05.290Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Education, inequality and use of digital collaborative platforms: The European case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Jesús M Artero ,
Cristina Borra Open the ORCID record for Cristina Borra [Opens in a new window]  and
Rosario Gómez-Alvarez
Jesús M Artero
Affiliation:
Universidad de Sevilla, Spain
Cristina Borra*
Affiliation:
Universidad de Sevilla, Spain
Rosario Gómez-Alvarez
Affiliation:
Universidad de Sevilla, Spain
*
Cristina Borra, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad de Sevilla, Ramon y Cajal 1, Sevilla 41018, Spain. Email: cborra@us.es
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examines the causal relationship between education and the use of digital collaborative platforms as a first step in exploring the potential impact of the new digital labour markets on inequality. From the viewpoint of transaction costs theory, the less educated could benefit significantly from the digital collaborative economy due to the reduction in information costs made possible by this new form of exchange. Conversely, a positive relationship between educational level and platform use may be expected following neoclassical and institutionalist economic theories. Using microdata from the 2016 Eurobarometer survey, together with an instrumental variables strategy and conventional ordinary least squares models, hypothesis testing reveals that education has a clear positive effect on digital collaborative platform use. As a result, the less educated are less likely to access the job opportunities offered by digital labour markets. Understanding the relationship between education and access to digital collaborative platforms and impacts on socio-economic inequality is crucial for designing future public policies that promote social justice and well-being in a disrupted landscape.

Keywords

I24J47O344IRdigital collaborative platformseducationFourth Industrial Revolutioninequalitynon-standard employment
Type
Themed collection articles
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 31 , Issue 3: The Future of Work , September 2020 , pp. 364 - 382
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abraham, K, Haltiwanger, JC, Sandusky, K, et al. (2018) Measuring the gig economy: Current knowledge and open issues. NBER working paper no. 24950, Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acemoglu, D (2002) Technical change, inequality, and the labor market. Journal of Economic Literature 40(1): 7–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acquier, A, Daudigeos, T and Pinkse, J (2017) Promises and paradoxes of the sharing economy: An organizing framework. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 125: 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agrawal, A, Gans, J and Goldfarb, A (2019) Economic policy for artificial intelligence. Innovation Policy and the Economy 19(1): 139–159.Google Scholar
Andersson, M, Hjalmarsson, A and Avital, M (2013) Peer-to-peer service sharing platforms: Driving share and share alike on a mass-scale. In: Paper presented at thirty fourth international conference on information systems, Milan. Available at: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a5d1/c8142c5b5e83166745a00d59afa74b189397.pdf (accessed 4 June 2020).Google Scholar
Andreotti, A, Anselmi, G, Eichhorn, T, et al. (2017) Participation in the sharing economy. SSRN Electronic Journal. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2961745 (accessed 14 January 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arcidiacono, D, Gandini, A and Pais, I (2018) Sharing what? The ‘sharing economy’ in the sociological debate. The Sociological Review 66(2): 275–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, G (1962) Investment in human capital: A theoretical analysis. Journal of Political Economy 70(5): 9–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Belk, R (2010) Sharing. The Journal of Consumer Research 36(5): 715–734.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Belk, R (2017) Sharing without caring. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 10(2): 249–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calvó-Armengol, A and Jackson, MO (2004) The effects of social networks on employment and inequality. American Economic Review 94(3): 426–454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cansoy, M and Schor, JB (2016) Who Gets to Share in the ‘Sharing Economy’: Understanding the Patterns of Participation and Exchange in Airbnb. Boston College. Available at: https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/schools/cas_sites/sociology/pdf/SharingEconomy.pdf (accessed 4 June 2020).Google Scholar
Card, D (1995) Using geographic variation in college proximity to estimate the return to schooling. In: Christofides, LN, Grant, EK and Swidinsky, RR (eds) Aspects of Labor Market Behaviour: Essays in Honour of John Vanderkamp. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, pp. 1801–1863.Google Scholar
Card, D (1999) The causal effects of education on earnings. In: Ashenfelder, O and Card, D (eds) Handbook of Labor Economics, vol. 3. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier, pp. 1801–1863.Google Scholar
Card, D (2001) Estimating the return to schooling: Progress on some persistent econometric problems. Econometrica 69(5): 1127–1160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coase, RH (1960) The problem of social cost. The Journal of Law and Economics 3: 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Codagnone, C, Abadie, F and Biagi, F (2016) The future of work in the ‘sharing economy’. Market efficiency and equitable opportunities or unfair precarisation? JRC Science for Policy Report EUR 27913 EN, European Commission. Institute for Prospective Technological Studies.Google Scholar
Currie, J and Moretti, E (2003) Mother’s education and the intergenerational transmission of human capital: Evidence from college openings. Quarterly Journal of Economics 118(4): 1553–1604.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Ruyter, A, Brown, M and Burgess, J (2019) Gig work and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Conceptual and regulatory challenges. Journal of International Affairs 72(1): 37–50.Google Scholar
De Stefano, V (2015) The rise of the just-in-time workforce: On-demand work, crowdwork, and labor protection in the gig-economy. Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal 37(3): 471.Google Scholar
Di Stasio, V, Bol, T and Werfhorst, H (2015) What makes education positional? Institutions, overeducation and the competition for jobs. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 43: 1–11.Google Scholar
DiMaggio, P and Bonikowski, B (2008) Make money surfing the web? The impact of internet use on the earnings of US workers. American Sociological Review 73(2): 227–250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DiMaggio, P, Hargittai, E, Celeste, C, et al. (2004) From unequal access to differentiated use: A literature review and agenda for research on digital inequality. In: Neckerman, K (ed.) Social Inequality. New York: Russell SAGE Foundation, pp. 355–400.Google Scholar
Edelman, BG, Luca, M and Svirsky, D (2017) Racial discrimination in the sharing economy: Evidence from a field experiment. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 9(2): 1–22.Google Scholar
Eurobarometer (2016) The use of collaborative platforms. Flash Eurobarometer 438 Report. Brussels: European Commission. Available at: https://data.europa.eu/euodp/es/data/dataset/S2112_438_ENG (accessed 2 September 2017).Google Scholar
European Commission (2006) Employment in Europe Report 2006. Brussels: European Commission, Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities.Google Scholar
European Commission (2016) A European agenda for the collaborative economy. Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM%3A2016%3A356%3AFIN (accessed 14 January 2020).Google Scholar
European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice (2018) The Structure of the European Education Systems 2018/19: Schematic Diagrams. Eurydice Facts and Figures. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.Google Scholar
European Tertiary Education Register (ETER) (2018) Brussels: European Commission. 30 November. Available at: https://www.eter-project.com/#/home (accessed 14 January 2020).Google Scholar
Flanagan, F (2017) Symposium on work in the ‘gig’ economy: Introduction. The Economic and Labour Relations Review 28(3): 378–381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraiberger, S and Sundararajan, A (2015) Peer-to-Peer Rental Markets in the Sharing Economy. New York: NYU Stern School of Business Research Paper. Available at: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/conferences/2016-dids/Documents/Fraigerber_Sundararajan_March2016.pdf (accessed 4 June 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frenken, K and Schor, J (2017) Putting the sharing economy into perspective. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 23: 3–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gautier, PJ, van den Berg, GC, van Ours, J, et al. (2002) Worker turnover at the firm level and crowding out of lower educated workers. European Economic Review 46(3): 523–538.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gawer, A (ed.) (2009) Platforms, Markets and Innovation. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goedhart, N, Broerse, J, Kattouw, R, et al. (2019) Just having a computer doesn’t make sense: The digital divide from the perspective of mothers with a low socio-economic position. New Media & Society 21(11–12): 2347–2365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin, C and Katz, L (2008) The Race between Education and Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Greenwood, DT (2016) Institutionalist theories of the wage bargain: Beyond demand and supply. Journal of Economic Issues 50(2): 406–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hryshko, D, Luengo-Prado, M and Sorensen, B (2012) The effect of education on equity holdings. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 12(1): 1935–1682.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huws, U, Spencer, NH, Syrdal, DS, et al. (2017) Work in the European Gig Economy: Research Results from the UK, Sweden, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy. Brussels; Hertfordshire: FEPS (Foundation for European Progressive Studies), UNI-Europa and University of Hertfordshire.Google Scholar
Imbens, G and Angrist, J (1994) Identification and estimation of local average treatment effects. Econometrica 62(2): 467–475.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krueger, D and Kumar, K (2004) Skill-specific rather than general education: A reason for US-Europe growth differences? Journal of Economic Growth 9(2): 167–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lemieux, T (2006) Post secondary education and increasing wage inequality. American Economic Review 96(2): 195–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lobel, O (2019) Regulating the sharing economy: Self-governance, efficiency & values. San Diego Legal Studies Paper no. 19–419. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3473215# (accessed 17 July 2020).Google Scholar
Lochner, L (2011) Nonproduction benefits of education: Crime, health, and good citizenship. NBER working paper no 16722. Cambridge, MA. Available at: https://www.nber.org/papers/w16722.pdf (accessed 4 June 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, CJ (2016) The sharing economy: A pathway to sustainability or a nightmarish form of neoliberal capitalism? Ecological Economics 121: 149–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minter, K (2017) Negotiating labour standards in the gig economy: Airtasker and Unions New South Wales. The Economic and Labour Relations Review 28(3): 438–454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newlands, G, Lutz, C and Fieseler, C (2018) Recommendations for the sharing economy: (re-) balancing power. SSRN. Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3106584 (accessed 14 January 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (2017) Digital platforms for facilitating access to research infrastructures. OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers 49. Paris: OECD Publishing.Google Scholar
Pesole, A, Urzí Brancati, MC, Fernández-Macías, E, et al. (2018) Platform Workers in Europe. Luxemburg: Publications Office of the European Union.Google Scholar
PwC (2015) The sharing economy. Available at: https://www.pwc.com/us/en/industry/entertainment-media/publications/consumer-intelligence-series/assets/pwc-cis-sharing-economy.pdf (accessed 14 January 2020).Google Scholar
Quattrone, G, Proserpio, D, Quercia, D, et al. (2016) Who benefits from the ‘sharing’ economy of Airbnb? In: Proceedings of the 25th international conference on world wide web, Montreal, QC, Canada, 11–15 April, International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee. Available at: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1483036/ (accessed 14 January 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ravenelle, A (2017) Sharing economy workers: Selling, not sharing. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 10(2): 281–295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schor, JB (2017) Does the sharing economy increase inequality within the eighty percent? Findings from a qualitative study of platform providers. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 10(2): 263–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schor, JB and Attwood-Charles, W (2017) The ‘sharing’ economy: Labor, inequality, and social connection on for-profit platforms. Sociology Compass 11(8): e12493. Available at: https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12493 (accessed 4 June 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schor, JB, Fitzmaurice, C, Attwood-Charles, W, et al. (2016) Paradoxes of openness and distinction in the sharing economy. Poetics 54: 66–81.Google Scholar
Schwab, K (2016) The Fourth Industrial Revolution: What It Means, and How to Respond. Cologny: World Economic Forum.Google Scholar
Smith, A (2016) Shared, Collaborative and on Demand: The New Digital Economy. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.Google Scholar
Sobel, I (1982) Human capital and institutional theories of the labor market: Rivals or complements? Journal of Economic Issues 16(1): 255–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanford, J (2017) The resurgence of gig work: Historical and theoretical perspectives. The Economic and Labour Relations Review 28(3): 382–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanford, J (2019) A turning point for labour market policy in Australia. Economic and Labour Relations Review 30(2): 177–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, A and Stanford, J (2017) Regulating work in the gig economy: What are the options? The Economic and Labour Relations Review 28(3): 420–437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stock, J and Yogo, M (2005) Testing for weak instruments in Linear IV regression. In: Andrews, DWK (ed.) Identification and Inference for Econometric Models. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 80–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sundararajan, A (2016) The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Thebault-Spieker, J, Tervee, LG and Hecht, B (2015) Avoiding the South Side and the suburbs: The geography of mobile crowdsourcing markets. In: Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW1’5), pp. 265–275. ACM Press. Available at: https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2675133.2675278 (accessed 1 June 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thurow, LC (1975) Generating Inequality. London: MacMillan Press.Google Scholar
Torero, M and Von Braun, J (2006) Information and Communication Technologies for Development and Poverty Reduction: The Potential of Telecommunications. Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins University Press e IFPRI.Google Scholar
Van Dijk, J (2005) The Deepening Divide Inequality in the Information Society. London: SAGE.Google Scholar
Van Laar, E, van Deursen, AJAM, van Dijk, JAGM, et al. (2017) The relation between 21st-century skills and digital skills: A systematic literature review. Computers in Human Behavior 72: 577–588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verwiebe, R, Wiesböck, L and Teitzer, R (2014) New forms of intra-European migration, labour market dynamics and social inequality in Europe. Migration Letters 11(2): 125–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williamson, OE (1981) The economics of organization: The transaction cost approach. American Journal of Sociology 87(3): 548–577.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wu, Y, Damnée, S, Kerhervé, H, et al. (2015) Bridging the digital divide in older adults: A study from an initiative to inform older adults about new technologies. Clinical Interventions in Aging 10: 193–200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Supplementary material: File

Artero et al. supplementary material
Download undefined(File)
File 126 KB