Growth and Trends of Gig economy: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract: The major objectives of this paper are two fold. First, the paper captures and explains the
recent growth trends of gig economy and its effects. Second, the paper discusses on bibliometric analysis
using VOS viewer software. Different terminologies used to describe gig workers and emergence of gig
economy in the world. In order to accomplish this, we applied the bibliometric method (bibliographic
coupling) and data extracted from the Scopus Database it is a relatively new -field of study. Gig
platforms, such as Freelance, Upwork, represent an expansion of the gig economy to encompass
knowledge-based work. A new economic model that embraces a variety of forms of short-term
employment is rapidly spreading around the world. Independent gig workers are their own boss and
choose these jobs voluntarily. Covid-19 also affected online job openings and online job filling affected
the spread of pandemic. The development of online communication platforms has given rise to the
phenomenon of the gig economy.

Introduction:

The rise of technology, cheap labor, and entrepreneurial spirit is aiding the growth of the gig economy.
The platforms enable workers to connect across geographical boundaries. Consequently, the outcomes are
raising productivity and optimizing employment and income distribution. The rise of the gig economy is
likely to increase overall productivity due to the increase in labor force participation rates. Rather than
hiring one generalist to complete all tasks, companies can designate tasks to various freelancers
specializing in that area. (Banik & Padalkar, 2021)
A new economic model that embraces a variety of forms of short-term employment is rapidly spreading
around the world, becoming an everyday reality and transforming the labor market.
Full-time employment in the gig economy may lead to lower-income and economic
vulnerability for lower-skilled workers in developed countries. As the workers from less
developed countries get connected to the potential recruiters in developed regions, their
wage rates are likely to increase at a faster rate. Similarly, a low skilled worker from the
developed country is likely to lose out in the presence of global competition. Things may
get more difficult for these unskilled laborers in the presence of technological innovation.
(Mahato et al., n.d.)

One of the promises of the gig economy is that workers have more flexibility to work when and as much as
they want. That’s why many people start driving to earn extra income outside of their day jobs or in their free
time. Hobbyists represent an illustrative segment of part-time drivers in the workforce. These supplemental
earners are comprised of retirees, working professionals, women. Their primary motivation is to work hard to
earn more money .( What Motivates Gig Economy Workers)

The rise of the platform is partly due to the decline of full-time, long-term jobs and cycles of high
unemployment rates. It also represents a shift in preferences as many people entering the labor market
today prefer flexibility and control over their work-time. The platform also offers opportunities to profit
more directly from one’s labor.(Scully-Russ & Torraco, 2020)

Gig economy is relatively new concept and it is considered to be the most significant economic change of
last decade and is conceptualized along four dimensions including: online intermediation; paid tasks;
independent contractors and personal services. Researcher study is attempts to understand the impact of
Covid-19 on platform economy. Because of the lockdown, many companies have asked their employees
to work from home, where possible. So, it is interesting to know whether the incidence of pandemic has
positively affected the Gig Economy. (Umar et al., 2020)
This study concludes that Covid-19 has positively affected the Gig economy. The number of average
daily tasks/jobs posted and filled on platform economy has increased since the incidence of Covid-19. As
the Covid-19 incidence has created the extraordinary situation so the Gig economy is taking time to adjust
with the new normal due to the prevailing uncertainty.(Harpur & Blanck, 2020)

Gig Economy in the literature

Trends make the gig economy more relevant and prominent in today’s digital era. Gig economy is a free
market system where organizations contract with independent workers for a short-term project or service
engagement. Traditional jobs in the United States will be replaced by “gig” or “freelance” work
performed by self-employed workers acting as independent contractors. While a shift towards a “gig
economy” could increase opportunities for flexible work.(What Is the Gig Economy? Definition from
WhatIs.Com, n.d.)
In a few advanced countries, the young workforce opted for these contractual jobs as a lifestyle choice in
order to avoid binding rules and regulations of permanent jobs. However, in many countries, gig
platforms provide “bridge employment” before joining permanent jobs.(Friedman, 2014)
The gig economy is fast emerging as a respite, offering employment opportunities for millions of Indians.
This article also explores the prospects and challenges of gig work in India and the ways in which it can
prove to be a provider of decent work opportunities for people. Gig economy offers many opportunities to
gig workers such as flexible work environment, working in interest areas, access to global job postings.
However, it poses many challenges to freelancers in the form of less payment, lack of social benefit and
job security. The opportunities for corporates are related to hiring freelancers namely reduced costs, less
obligation, and talent on demand.(Roy & Shrivastava, 2020)

Why Do Gig Work?

The main reason workers give for participating in the gig economy is extra income. A secondary motive
in the literature is flexibility and autonomy. Motivations can be divided into “push” (unemployment,
under- employment) and “pull” (flexibility, income) factors. For workers in Low-and Middle-income
Countries, one key reason cited is higher income wages, because platform businesses have the potential to
connect workers whose skills may be underutilized in their local labour markets to global opportunities.
There was an overall positive perception of gig work.(Bajwa et al., n.d.)
Professional flexibility is the strongest and significant merit of gig work. In most cases, this professional
flexibility is preferred by the employees. Gig work is additional work, which enhances the financial gains
of most of the women employees. But at the same time, a majority of freshers’ are depending upon gig
work as a stop-gap or test-drive purpose and for few gig workers, it is a replacement career. In the
majority of gig jobs, employers are paid on the basis of projects allotted, projects completed or the nature
of task involved.(Vadavi et al., 2021)
The impact of the gig economy at work is extremely pervasive and felt across industries. It has
completely changed the way of engaging people at work and has brought a fundamental shift in how
our economy operates. Though gig economy provides enormous benefits to the workers in terms of
flexibility, employment, freedom, etc., at an equivalent time it's an adverse impact on the industry
working environment(Vallas & Schor, 2020)
A Gig economy incorporates all stages that contract self-employed entities, specialists and laborers
in various areas, economy slops towards the ‘Gig Economy’ from ‘Mixed Economy’ of the country.
So this study reflect that how this new system be effective for the country, how it may be
challenging and beneficial.(Bansal & Singh, 2020)
The gig economy is also getting bigger in India as many young educated professionals in India are joining
on large global freelancing platforms. The number of gig workers in India was 15 million in 2015, only
second to the US with 53 million freelancers. The popularity of gig work among the hiring professionals
in India mainly attributed to “drive efficiency, innovation, and competitive advantage” while maintaining
the human resource cost at its minimum. Indian freelancers are mainly joining the gig economy due to
work hour flexibility, opportunity of being their own boss, option to choose the job based on their interest
and workload. Interestingly, 41 per cent of Indian gig workers are engaged in Information Technology
(IT) and/or related jobs.(The Freelance Army: Why Many Indians Are Choosing Part-Time over Full-Time
- The Financial Express, n.d.)
India comprises around 40 percent of the independent occupations offered comprehensively, with 15
million gifted experts fueling the expanding request of agreement-based employments or the independent
business. Consultants are pulled in to the Gig Economy since they can pursue their specialty and,
simultaneously, influence the adaptability and freedom that accompanies it. (Bansal & Singh, 2020)
The Gigsters are the new derivative of employees who will add value to the employment scape in India.
Gigsters are those who take on a gig (Get it Going) project based on their specific skill sets that match the
job requirements. The pandemic has just thrown open the door for gigsters to take centre stage in India.
This paper looks at the gig boom in India and how it can significantly change the employment landscape
in India. (Jacob & Shaikh, 2021)

Methods

Bibliometric analysis provides insight and contributes to the information about the literature pertaining to
a certain field (Ellegaard, 2018), importance of this type of study rests upon the fact that possessing
knowledge about the people and institutions that are conducting research, as well as the locations in
which this research is being published, is relevant to identify those who will be capable of providing the
best conceptual or methodological contributions(Podsakoff et al., 2008) . In the present study, two
bibliometric techniques are used to conduct the analysis. Citation analysis, which is more common in this
type of study, is carried out through the exposure of lists and rankings(Zupic & Čater, 2015), The
formation of networks and clusters through authorship, county analysis and bibliographic coupling
through the formation of networks and clusters. This technique is based on the references that two
documents have in common and measures the similarity between them. Greater the number of
publications in common cited by the studies, the closer their relation(Garfield, 2001). In order to make
this analysis viable, the search was conducted on one of the largest scientific knowledge databases.
Elsevier’s Scopus is the largest database of abstracts and citations in peer-reviewed literature, whether
from scientific journals, books or conference papers (Elsevier, 2019). Although we considered using other
databases such as the Web of Science, which is also recognized by the scientific community. The treated
data was exported in Excel format, organized by the citation analysis results, as demonstrated in the
number of publications, as well as in the number of citations, aside from the use of other indicators so that
the researchers may decide which one to adopt when considering the study’s influence. Some studies use
the number of publications as the most relevant factor in measuring the influence of a researcher or an
institution (Podsakoff et al., 2008)
Finally, for the mapping of bibliometric analysis, we used the bibliographic authorship and country
citation technique. All publications were imported to the Vos Viewer software and a mapping of the
existing relations was generated through the visualization of similarities method(N. J. P. van Eck &
Waltman, 2006). We chose Vos Viewer instead of any other software because, unlike other programs that
are normally used for bibliometric mapping ,Vos Viewer focuses on the graphic representation of
bibliometric maps, presenting these in a manner that is easy to interpret (N. J. van Eck & Waltman, 2010).
VOS viewer is software’s use in studies related to the sharing economy field may be observed in the
systematic review recently conducted. (Netto & Tello-Gamarra, 2020)
Results and Discussion
Bibliometrics analysis data will be presented in this section. Evolution of research about the gig economy
over the years and the main keywords used by these studies, as well as a panorama about the main
producers of knowledge and studies produced in this field will be approached sequentially. Research
results aim to demonstrate the spectrum of knowledge production in this field of research up to now and
will be important in order to discuss and analyze the research trends and research agenda.

Authorship of the countries: Production per Country Among the countries with the greatest number of
publications, the Australia , Canada ,Germany ,India , Norway ,United States and the United Kingdom
concentrate a larger number of publications in relation to the rest of the countries as shown in the table
however conducting the analysis with other indicators, such as citations , the scenario highlights some
other countries, such as Canada (5th), the Australia (3rd), India (4th) ,United Kingdom (2 nd)and United
states (1st), which gain expressiveness in the citations category with all countries, Another interesting
point to be noted is the fact that in the United States there is a larger number of researchers working on
the subject, but a lower number of publications while in India and Norway.

Table:1 Authorship of the countries

     
Document Total link
Sl No. Id Country s Citations strength
1 1 Australia 11 89 5
2 4 Canada 6 42 0
3 10 Germany 7 16 2
4 12 India 5 50 2
5 17 Norway 5 32 2
6 27 United Kingdom 23 959 3
7 28 United States 12 189 2
Through the above table we can see that for the topic of Growth and Trends of Gig economy, here in the
bibliometrics analysis out of 28 countries with minimum number of citations of a country is five (5) out
of this 7 meet the threshold, out of 7 countries 4 items are largest set of connected items. The highest
number of studies has been conducted for the country United Kingdom with the number of papers
published being 23 with citation of 959, followed by United States with 12 documents and 189 citation.
The least number of papers for the current topic has been conducted for India and Norway with the
number papers published being 5.
Authorship of the countries

Since this is a recent research area, the production of a study with a higher number of citations ends up
highlighting its countries, so we ranked the countries by the number of studies they produced and cited. In
Table 1, it is possible to observe which ones have more publications.

Authors and Publication

Through the co-authorship of authors table -2 we can see that for the topic of The Growth and Trends of
Gig economy ,out of 68 documents and 182 authors 80 meet the threshold with minimum citation of an
author is five(5),for each of 80 authors greatest total link strength will be selected and highest total link of
strength is 14.The author Lehdonvirta v. is having highest citation of 563.

Table:2 Authors and Publication

Sl
No. id Author documents citations total link strength
1 3 ANWAR M.A. 1 11 1
2 4 AROLES J. 1 18 2
3 5 AUDEBRAND L.K. 1 31 3
4 6 AWASTHI I.C. 1 7 1
5 7 BAIYERE A. 1 9 2
6 8 BAMBER G.J. 1 14 3
BERGVALL-
7 17 KÅREBORN B. 1 78 1
8 25 BROWN W. 1 6 9
9 27 BUCHER E.L. 1 8 2
10 28 BURTCH G. 1 104 2
11 29 BÖGENHOLD D. 1 7 2
12 30 CARNAHAN S. 1 104 2
13 34 CHANG C. 1 6 9
14 37 COLFER B. 1 6 9
15 39 CRISTIAN CIURLĂU F. 1 12 1
16 40 CROTEAU A.-M. 1 31 3
17 42 DE VAUJANY F.-X. 1 18 2
18 43 DE’ R. 1 43 2
19 44 DUNN M. 1 13 3
20 45 FIESELER C. 2 14 4
21 46 FLANAGAN F. 1 13 0
22 48 FLEMING P. 2 104 0
23 50 FORD M. 1 9 1
24 52 GANDINI A. 1 81 0
25 53 GEELAN T. 1 6 9
26 56 GRAESSLEY S. 1 40 4
27 57 GRAHAM M. 4 436 8
28 58 GREENWOOD B.N. 1 104 2
29 61 HARNEY B. 1 6 9
30 62 HARVEY G. 1 29 3
31 65 HJORTH I. 2 370 5
32 67 HONAN V. 1 9 1
33 68 HORAK J. 1 40 4
34 70 HOWCROFT D. 1 78 1
35 71 HUANG W. 1 6 9
36 72 ISLAM A.K.M.N. 1 9 2
37 74 JABAGI N. 1 31 3
38 78 JARRAHI M.H. 1 13 3
39 85 KANDUTSCH F. 1 7 2
40 87 KEEGAN A. 2 39 2
41 90 KLINGLMAIR R. 1 7 2
42 93 KOST D. 2 14 4
43 94 KOVACOVA M. 1 40 4
44 95 KÄSSI O. 1 61 1
45 96 LANSBURY R.D. 1 14 3
46 97 LEHDONVIRTA V. 5 563 8
47 98 LEUNG M.D. 1 8 0
48 102 MACCARRONE V. 1 42 1
49 104 MAFFIE M.D. 1 6 0
50 106 MARSAN J. 1 31 3
51 108 MCLAUGHLIN C. 1 6 9
52 110 MEHTA B.S. 1 7 1
53 111 MEIJERINK J. 2 39 2
54 112 MEILHAN D. 1 6 0
55 113 MITEV N. 1 18 2
56 115 MORALES M. 1 7 0
57 116 MÄNTYMÄKI M. 1 9 2
58 119 NELSON S.B. 1 13 3
59 120 NEWLANDS G. 1 10 0
60 124 PAL A. 1 43 2
 61 125 PANDEY N. 1 43 2
62 128 PERÒ D. 1 6 0
63 132 POLIAK M. 1 40 4
64 133 POPESCU G.H. 1 12 1
65 138 RAWLING M. 2 10 2
66 139 RHODES C. 1 29 3
SCHOFIELD-
67 145 GEORGESON E. 2 10 2
68 147 SCHOU P.K. 2 8 3
69 157 SUTHERLAND W. 1 13 3
70 158 TASSINARI A. 1 42 1
71 160 TODOLÍ-SIGNES A. 1 40 0
72 161 TREVOR J. 1 6 9
73 164 VACHHANI S.J. 1 29 3
74 166 VALASKOVA K. 1 40 4
75 168 WAILES N. 1 14 3
76 169 WALDKIRCH M. 2 8 3
77 173 WILLIAMS K. 1 29 3
78 174 WONG S.I. 2 14 4
79 175 WOOD A.J. 3 242 14
80 176 WRIGHT C.F. 2 20 12

At this point, it is important to analyze the possible reasons behind these articles receiving an elevated
number of citations in this research field, at this point, it is important to analyze the possible reasons
behind these articles receiving an elevated number of citations in this research field. Since this is a recent
research area, the production of a study with a higher number of citations ends up highlighting its author.
In Table 3, it is possible to observe which ones have more publications. A minimum of one published
study was necessary for consideration and lowest citation is 6, highest citation is 563.Heighest link
strength is 14 by author Wood A.J with published document is 3, citation is 242.

Conclusions
Present research study aimed to present a quantitative view of studies related to the gig economy, as well
as a map of the directions taken by recent research studies through the identification of the main research
lines that have been adopted. For this purpose, bibliometric data about the gig economy was collected and
analyzed. We believe that this study provides all-around view of the studies related to this subject, with
new results being presented through citation analysis. A new perspective was also emerged through the
bibliographic coupling technique. It allows us to position new researchers in the field’s main research
trends, which in addition to our research agenda will enable the advancement of knowledge production in
the field and can lead to clearer definitions. For instance, LEHDONVIRTA V is the most cited author
with 5 publications among the referenced and yet he is only the highest-ranking author in number of
publications. Authors with many published articles are not necessarily the most influential in this field of
study. Recently, however, the analyses have been based on gig platform. It can be explained due to the
fact that these platforms enjoy growing character in the market, which turns them into a model for
emerging businesses or for those that need to adapt to current covid-19 times. As a limitation to be
considered is that fact that the present study did not consider publications outside of the Scopus database.
With this in mind, we suggest that for future bibliometric studies.

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