报告题目：Injury insurance in the gig economy: Should platforms or drivers pay the premium?

报告时间：2026年5月18日（周一）下午13:30

报告地点：旭日楼310室

报告人：Ting Zhang

Speaker's bio: Ting Zhang is a Senior Lecturer in Operations Analytics at the University of Bristol Business School. She obtained her PhD degree from University of Science and Technology of China and City University of Hong Kong in 2017. Her research interests focus on marketing-operations interfaces. Her publications appear in Production and Operations Management, European Journal of Operational Research, Naval Research Logistics, Decision Sciences, etc. She serves as a Department Editor of IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management and an Editorial Board Member of Transportation Research Part E.

Abstract: In the gig economy, delivery drivers (e.g., food delivery couriers) face speed-related traffic accidents when serving consumers via delivery platforms (e.g., DoorDash). Injury insurance helps cover drivers’ losses from such accidents, whereas the responsibility for paying insurance premiums may fall on the platform (which connects consumers and drivers) or the drivers themselves. To study the effects of injury insurance and different premium-payment strategies, we analyze three scenarios: no insurance, the platform paying the insurance premium, and drivers paying it. Our findings reveal that the availability of insurance can increase the platform’s profit and the average traffic accident rate among drivers who participate in providing delivery services. Moreover, the platform’s profit and the participating drivers’ average accident rate will be higher when the platform pays the premium than when the drivers pay it. Among the three scenarios, the platform paying the premium will lead to the highest profit for it if the loss in a traffic accident and the consumer’s sensitivity to the delivery time are high, and drivers paying the premium will lead to the lowest average traffic accident rate if the loss in an accident is low. The availability of insurance reduces the total accident costs but harms driver welfare. By highlighting the trade-offs associated with different insurance scenarios, our study provides insights into balancing economic benefits and social costs in the gig economy.