{"id":1914,"date":"2021-02-12T07:39:17","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T09:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bise-journal.com\/?p=1914"},"modified":"2021-09-14T15:18:49","modified_gmt":"2021-09-14T17:18:49","slug":"05-2022-platform-economy-beyond-the-traveled-paths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bise-journal.com\/?p=1914","title":{"rendered":"05\/2022 – Platform Economy: Beyond the Traveled Paths"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Special Issue<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digital services and online platforms have become pervasive in all our daily lives and facilitate a wide variety of economic and social activities. This digitization of business and society has profound implications for consumer behavior and, consequently, many industries worldwide. For example, two-sided markets have emerged as popular alternatives to traditional media channels and business models. With billions in venture capital and significant market evaluations, the platform economy\u2019s most prominent players have, in fact, entered the league of long-established industry incumbents in their respective domains. Examples include electronic commerce (e.g., Amazon, eBay, Zalando), accommodation (e.g., Airbnb, Booking.com, ImmobilienScout24), mobility (e.g., Getaround, BlaBlaCar), online work (e.g., Upwork, Fiverr, 99designs), manual tasks (e.g., Helpling, TaskRabbit), dating (e.g., Parship, Tinder), and many more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Platforms impact business and society in many ways. New business models such as ride- and accommodation sharing, which were inconceivable on a large scale even a few years ago, have become mainstream now. As a result of marketization and platformization of people\u2019s lives, factors such as trust and privacy have gained more prominence than ever before. Platforms\u2019 design choices and employed algorithms affect our lives in many ways as these decisions \u2013 deliberately or not \u2013 set the rules for our social and economic interactions. This leads to issues such as the potential for algorithmic bias on these platforms and certain sections of the society being disadvantaged in the long-run. What is more, the 21st century\u2019s human being is forced to maintain a complex online reputation. Reputational data emerge in several (platform-bound) contexts \u2013 building and maintaining this reputation as a signal of trustworthiness and enabler of transactions is associated with effort and costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this Special Issue, we seek to address the implications of this digital future in view of users, platform operators, legislative bodies, citizens, and society as a whole, with a particular focus on the \u201cless traveled paths\u201d (see bullet list below) in this domain. A rich body of work has emerged within this field of research, but many open questions remain \u2013 and new ones are prompted literally every week. In addition, it is apparent that there exist theoretical deficits within the platform literature. We hence also call for contributions applying established theoretical perspectives to the outlined problems, advancing them, or conceiving novel ones. We therefore seek contributions focusing on \u2013 but not necessarily limited to \u2013 the following selected areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n