To Be (Safe), or Not to Be (Safe)? A Daily Exploration of Why and When Gig Workers Stay Safe Under Customer Demands

IF 6.8 2区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS

Journal of Organizational Behavior Pub Date : 2025-03-05 DOI:10.1002/job.2874

Jinghao Zhang, Jiaxin Xue, Yingxin Deng, Zongbo Li, Yuhui Li

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Gig workers in the food delivery industry constantly face life-threatening occupational safety risks. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the hazards of this work that entail potential dangers in traffic situations. Drawing on paradox theory, we theorize a typical tension in the daily experiences of food delivery workers, the finance–safety paradox. We examine how this dilemma can be triggered by customer demands that could influence delivery workers' safety (i.e., safety behavior and driving speed) through altering their finance and safety concerns. Using the experience sampling method, we conducted a 14-day diary study with 117 food delivery workers (1430 observations) in China. The results indicate that daily customer demands increased workers' daily safety concern when workers perceived stronger algorithmic supervision and fewer algorithmic errors on the focal day. Higher daily safety concern resulted in increased daily safety behavior and lower daily driving speed, while higher daily finance concern enhanced daily driving speed. Our research identifies a key driver of safety risks for gig workers in the food delivery industry, elucidates the role of algorithms in their safety compliance, and broadens our knowledge of how they navigate the salient tension between financial precarity and safety risks.

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做（安全）还是不做（安全）？每日探索零工工人在客户需求下为何以及何时保持安全

外卖行业的零工经常面临危及生命的职业安全风险。然而，很少有学者注意到这项工作的危害，包括在交通情况下的潜在危险。利用悖论理论，我们将外卖工人日常经历中的一种典型紧张关系理论化，即财务-安全悖论。我们研究了顾客的需求如何通过改变他们的财务和安全问题来影响送货员的安全（即安全行为和驾驶速度），从而引发这种困境。采用经验抽样法，对117名中国外卖工人（1430名观察者）进行了为期14天的日记研究。结果表明，当工人在焦点日感受到更强的算法监督和更少的算法错误时，日常客户需求增加了工人的日常安全关注。较高的日常安全关注度导致日常安全行为增加和日常驾驶速度降低，而较高的日常财务关注度提高了日常驾驶速度。我们的研究确定了外卖行业零工安全风险的一个关键驱动因素，阐明了算法在其安全合规中的作用，并拓宽了我们对他们如何在财务不稳定和安全风险之间的突出紧张关系中进行导航的认识。

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来源期刊

Journal of Organizational Behavior Multiple-

CiteScore

10.50

自引率

5.90%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Organizational Behavior aims to publish empirical reports and theoretical reviews of research in the field of organizational behavior, wherever in the world that work is conducted. The journal will focus on research and theory in all topics associated with organizational behavior within and across individual, group and organizational levels of analysis, including: -At the individual level: personality, perception, beliefs, attitudes, values, motivation, career behavior, stress, emotions, judgment, and commitment. -At the group level: size, composition, structure, leadership, power, group affect, and politics. -At the organizational level: structure, change, goal-setting, creativity, and human resource management policies and practices. -Across levels: decision-making, performance, job satisfaction, turnover and absenteeism, diversity, careers and career development, equal opportunities, work-life balance, identification, organizational culture and climate, inter-organizational processes, and multi-national and cross-national issues. -Research methodologies in studies of organizational behavior.