Exploring Invisible Disability Disclosure in the Sharing Economy

Sharing economy platforms enable people-including those with disabilities-to engage in flexible work outside of traditional workplaces. Though gender and race have been studied, discrimination against service providers with disabilities has not been explored. In this poster, we conducted a 2 - 3 between-group experiment to study whether disability status and work type would affect perceptions of credibility and hiring. We found mixed results: there is no significant statistical difference on credibility perception of service providers and hiring decisions. In the open-end response analysis, we grouped three important factors impacting customers' hiring decision toward service providers with disabilities, including platform, work-related attributes, and personal traits.