Report on the different business typologies of digital platforms in the sharing economy

Abstract

This report is focused on the economical dimension of the work package 1 of Platform Labour in Urban Spaces (PLUS) project, titled "Conceptualizing platforms: legislative, economical and historical dimension". More specifically, this document is going to investigate and articulate the different types of business models related to the platforms in terms of legal structures, ownership, governance, data and technological policies, growth model, and social and economic impact. The main goal of the research is to analyse the different types of digital platforms and their business models around the four areas established in the PLUS project. From this, a set of recommendations regarding the economic dimension is provided, to apply in the future development of the project. To study this, an empirical analysis of 60 platforms has been performed in the four labour PLUS areas: Networked hospitality business, Taxi services, Urban food delivery and On-demand home services and care.The conclusions show that different business models in the Platform Economy (PE) coexist. Moreover, from the more extractivist models to the more cooperative ones, the governance of the platform plays a major role in their characterisation. The analysis also shows that as the nature of the PE business models respond to a constantly changing environment, so too does the different labour models of platforms. It then becomes interesting to analyse what implications this has on the juridical recognition and working conditions of platform workers. At the same time, the results of this investigation highlight the interconnection among governance, economic model and data and technological policies. In this regard, alternative platforms based on digital commons and cooperativistic values are the most democratic. This report is divided into ten parts. After the executive summary, the second chapter of this report undertakes in the identification of the different classifications around the digital platforms typologies and their business models. The third chapter focuses on a brief state of the art of the four labour PLUS areas from two perspectives: socioeconomic and technological impact. Afterwards, the theoretical review of the analytical digital platforms framework is presented. In the fifth chapter, the methodology and the sample are presented, while the following chapters provide the analysis of results and report conclusions. Finally, some recommendations are reported before the references used and the annexes.