Over the past 20 years, behavioral economists have found evidence for a phenomenon known as income targeting, in which workers who can decide how long to work
each day, like cabdrivers, do so with a goal in mind — say, $100 — much the way marathon runners try to get their time below four hours or three hours.
“The whole thing is like a video game,” said Eli Solomon, a veteran Uber
and Lyft driver in the Chicago area, who said he sometimes had to fight the urge to work more after glancing at his data.
The consultants devised an experiment in which the company showed one group of inexperienced drivers how much more they would
make by moving from a slow period like Tuesday morning to a busy time like Friday night — about $15 more per hour.
“If you need to pick up your kids at soccer practice at 6 p.m.,” said Nundu Janakiram, the Uber official in charge of products
that improve drivers’ experiences, “it will start to give you trips to take you in the general direction to get to a specific place in time.”
There is also the possibility that as the online gig economy matures, companies like Uber may adopt a set of norms
that limit their ability to manipulate workers through cleverly designed apps.
“The optimal default we set is that we want you to do as much work as there is to do,” he said of the company’s app.
“I’ve got screen shots with dozens of these messages,” said Mr. Streeter, who began driving full time for Lyft
and then Uber in 2014 but quit last year to invest in real estate.
“If what you’re doing is basically saying, ‘We’ve found a cheap way to get you to do work without paying you for it, we’ll pay you in badges
that don’t cost anything,’ that’s a manipulative way to go about it,” he said.