Page 67 - Kaleidoscope Academic Conference Proceedings 2020

ANALYSIS ON THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF INTERNET PLATFORMS

(Based on Survey Data from WeChat (China) during 2019-2020)

Anqi Zheng

China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), China

ABSTRACT traditional industries, bringing about great changes to the
economy, society, the way of production, and lifestyles.
In recent years, the global economy has been going through
a critical period of economic growth driver transformation, 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
with further economic slowdown. At the same time, the
outbreak of COVID-19 has brought a severe blow to the As a typical component of the digital economy, Internet
world’s economy. Against these backdrops, the digital platforms bring new drivers for employment.
economy has presented extraordinary resilience of
development, bringing unprecedented opportunities to First, as an important channel for boosting employment,
various industries and injecting new momentum to social Internet platforms have brought digital dividends. The
and economic development. How large is the impact of the research on the new economy conducted by Hu Angang in
Internet platform economy on economic and social 2016 found that the number of jobs directly related to digital
development? Will it increase the overall employment or technologies, such as information transmission, computer
influence the employment structure? Has the Internet service and software, have experienced tremendous growth,
platform truly stabilized the economy and society during the indirectly driving the increase of digital-technology-related
outbreak? Through case studies on the survey data from jobs in other fields, including such emerging businesses as
WeChat during 2019-2020, this paper employs delivery service and online car-hailing services [1]. In the
questionnaire-based statistical approach and the empirical research on the impacts of the digital economy on
expenditure approach applied in measuring national individuals’ job-seeking decisions, which is based on the
economic accounting to unveil the impacts of Internet survey data obtained through family tracking, it suggests that
platforms on economic and social development, hoping to the dividends of the digital economy have more significant
provide reference to future studies in the field. impacts in facilitating the employment decision-making of
people with better educational backgrounds [2].
Keywords – COVID-19, employment, Internet platform,
social & economic impacts Second, the substitution effects of the platform economy on
traditional economy, and the platform’s two-sided market
1. INTRODUCTION mode, stimulate the ultrafast development of Internet
platforms and thus contribute to the job market. Li Xiaohua
Against the backdrop of the global economic downturn and pointed out in his study of 2019 that Internet platforms have
the pneumonia epidemic in COVID-19, the digital economy liberated enterprises from the restriction of resources and
has presented extraordinary resilience of development, capacities on their growth, making Internet platform
bringing unprecedented opportunities to various industries companies grow faster than traditional companies and
and injecting new momentum to social and economic creating more jobs [3]. At the same time, the digital economy
development. would also provide more resources and interactions for small
and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), facilitate them grow
This paper studies WeChat as a typical case of an Internet and further boost job markets.
platform due to the fact that WeChat has become an icon of
China’s digital economy. As of the end of 2019, the In addition, the Internet platform economy fosters three new
combined number of monthly active users of WeChat has industrial drivers and plays an active role in the adjustment
reached 1.164 billion, gaining widespread recognition from of employment structures. The research based on the panel
Chinese and foreign users. Various Internet platforms, data of 30 provinces from 2009 to 2019 by Wang Wen (2020)
represented by WeChat, have formed new means of showed that the improvement of industrial intelligence has
production relying on functions like official account, applet, significantly reduced the employment share of the
e-payment and corporate services, which have become a manufacturing industry, while it has increased the
necessary component in various industries, joining hands employment share of the service industry, especially the
with partners to form a new ecology, build new infrastructure, knowledge and technology-intensive modern service
and facilitate the deep integration of data elements with industry, promoted the upgrading of the employment

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