Online Food Delivery Platforms and Female Labor Force Participation

Jialu Liu (), Siqi Pei () and Xiaoquan (Michael) Zhang ()
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Jialu Liu: Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China
Siqi Pei: College of Business, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China
Xiaoquan (Michael) Zhang: Department of Management Science and Engineering, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China; Department of Decision Sciences and Managerial Economics, Business School, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong 88888, China

Information Systems Research, 2024, vol. 35, issue 3, 1074-1091

Abstract: The literature often explains female labor force participation through factors such as schooling, wage gaps, and fertility. In this study, we identify how technology-induced time savings from household chores increase female labor force participation in South Korea. Using a leads-and-lags difference-in-differences model, we find that entry of an online food delivery platform significantly increased the female employment rate in the three years following the platform’s entry, and the results still hold after excluding employment in the food and beverage sector. Our further analyses show that such digital platforms offered a pathway for women to break free from traditional household roles, thus granting them more time and the opportunity to decide whether to join the labor market or stay at home. We examine the positive externalities generated by the online food delivery platform and find that this new technology-induced female employment accounted for 0.27% of South Korea’s GDP, or 17 times the platform’s direct revenue.

Keywords: online food delivery platform; female labor force participation; positive externality; societal impact (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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