Understanding Belongingness in the Gig Economy: The Uplifting and Undermining Effects of Online Communities on Lonely Gig Workers
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Date
2024-01-09
Authors
Pychlau, Sophie
Journal Title
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
All humans have a need to belong and belongingness at work serves important organizational and personal purposes. However, gig workers face significant challenges to experiencing belongingness at work because their work is highly temporary, project-based, and occurs outside the relational scaffold afforded by organizations. Given these challenges, gig workers frequently engage in online communities that serve critical social and information-sharing functions. In this dissertation, I focus on gig workers’ individual behaviors in online communities related to gig work and analyze how these behaviors impede or further belongingness. Integrating the evolutionary model of loneliness and regulatory focus theory, I propose that loneliness at work motivates gig workers to engage in online communities in different ways that can either impede or facilitate belongingness. Specifically, I hypothesize that gig workers feel less belongingness when engaging in lurking behaviors, more belongingness when engaging in contributing behaviors. To offer practical advice on how to increase belongingness, I develop an intervention designed to increase contributing behaviors that enhance belongingness. Ultimately, I suggest that belongingness will affect withdrawal from work. I test my theoretical model in a ten-day experience sampling study (ESM) with 95 gig workers. My dissertation contributes to an understanding of how modern workers experience belongingness outside of organizations and the impact of online communities in this process.
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Keywords
Belonging, Experience Sampling Methodology, Gig work, Loneliness, Nonstandard work, Regulatory focus