Casualization of work, free riding and institutional distrust: Explaining social protection preferences of platform workers in Germany

Abstract The social protection of platform workers is widely recognized as a major political challenge but remains vastly understudied. The few existing investigations focus on social protection coverage and the employment status of platform workers, while their social protection preferences remain a black box to date. In this article, we investigate the social protection preferences of platform workers using a mixed methods design based on an online survey (n = 719) and qualitative in-depth interviews (n = 20) with self-employed platform workers in Germany. While the quantitative data indicate that the vast majority of respondents reject compulsory social insurance contributions for platform workers and favour self-employment over dependent employment, the qualitative interviews reveal three main types of explanations for this regulation aversion in different segments of platform work: The casualization of work in the platform economy, free riding on protection derived from ‘regular’ employment and distrust in established welfare state institutions. Against this background, we discuss challenges for social policies aiming at improving social protection for platform workers.