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Primary Submission Category: Health equity
The role of dependence in the relationship between platform work and mental health: a mixed methods investigation
Authors:Â Emilia F. Vignola, Nevin Cohen, Mustafa Hussein, Zoey Laskaris, Rositsa T. Ilieva, Sherry Baron,
Presenting Author: Emilia F. Vignola*
Gig work has spread rapidly in the US, where 16% of adults in 2021 reported ever earning income through an online platform. Of the 9% of US adults who earned income this way in the previous year, one third depended on platform work as their main job. Recent evidence suggests high-dependence platform workers experience greater psychological distress than low-dependence platform workers (those who consider platform work a secondary job). Dependence on platform work is related to social position and thus may have health equity implications, but its operationalization to date likely oversimplifies a multi-dimensional construct. In 2025 we launched a quantitative survey-based cohort study to assess the associations between platform work, dependence, and health among approximately 500 app-based food delivery workers in New York City. Leveraging that ongoing cohort study, this explanatory sequential mixed methods study aims to: 1) deepen understanding of the drivers and manifestations of platform work dependence through thematic analysis of 45-60 in-depth interviews among delivery workers at different levels of dependence; and 2) investigate how dependence might modify the platform work-mental health relationship through integration, comparison, and synthesis of the qualitative interview findings and quantitative cohort study results. Findings will advance scholarship on this emerging topic and support policy efforts to ensure workers’ needs are factored into the rapidly growing gig economy. The presentation will focus on preliminary findings and on the utility of a mixed methods approach to study and confront platform work as a social determinant of health and health equity.