Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Informal work activities, particularly gig work, embodies degrees of workforce participation, work identity, and workers’ motivations. This paper seeks to understand the degree in which social determinants such as race, gender, age and familial status, internal motivations, and one’s attachment to formal labor, may influence engagement of informal and gig work activities. Using U.S. representative population data from the Enterprising and Informal Work Activities (EIWA) survey, a series of logistic and multinomial logistic regressions were used to examine the predictive qualities of workers’ social demographics, work identity, and motivations to engage in informal and gig work activities. This paper also explores the predictive qualities of workers’ motivations and social identities upon gig work type using an adaptation of Kalleberg and Dunn’s (2016) gig work schema which categorizes gig work by platform and worker control. The results in this paper describe the nuances in understanding who is chooses gig work and motivations to engage in this work. The social determinants of gender, age, and living with children was found to be predictive indicators of choosing to engage in informal and gig work activities. Selling of goods was the most prevalent type of informal work engagement across multiple degrees of formal work attachment and internal motivations. Among digitized gig work platforms, participants’ motivations varied depending on work control patterns associated with gig work branding, employment skills, and worker enthusiasm. Informal work as opposed to gig work appears more accessible to those with socially vulnerable identities despite carrying more employment risks and instability. Implications for future research and policy includes gig work data that is specifically aimed at gig work participation and more nuanced understanding of workers’ motivations and the relationship between formal work identity and informal and gig work participation.