"At the end of the day, I am accountable": Gig Workers' Self-Tracking for Multi-Dimensional Accountability Management

TL;DR

This study explores how gig workers engage in self-tracking to manage multiple identities and accountabilities, revealing motivations, practices, and implications for platform design and worker autonomy.

Contribution

It provides an in-depth qualitative analysis of gig workers' self-tracking behaviors and connects these practices to broader neoliberal and power dynamics.

Findings

Gig workers track themselves across three identities: holistic, entrepreneurial, and platformized.

Self-tracking helps mitigate information asymmetries between workers and platforms.

Workers' self-tracking practices are influenced by neoliberal ideals of self-management.

Abstract

Tracking is inherent in and central to the gig economy. Platforms track gig workers' performance through metrics such as acceptance rate and punctuality, while gig workers themselves engage in self-tracking. Although prior research has extensively examined how gig platforms track workers through metrics -- with some studies briefly acknowledging the phenomenon of self-tracking among workers -- there is a dearth of studies that explore how and why gig workers track themselves. To address this, we conducted 25 semi-structured interviews, revealing how gig workers self-tracking to manage accountabilities to themselves and external entities across three identities: the holistic self, the entrepreneurial self, and the platformized self. We connect our findings to neoliberalism, through which we contextualize gig workers' self-accountability and the invisible labor of self-tracking. We further discuss how self-tracking mitigates information and power asymmetries in gig work and offer design implications to support gig workers' multi-dimensional self-tracking.