Platform economy deconstructed: intellectual bases and emerging ethical issues

The upsurge and domination of platform-based businesses have led scholars to examine different aspects of this digitally-enabled economy. However, a comprehensive review of the prevailing literature on platform economy is still missing. In this paper, we conduct a bibliometric analysis to better understand the state-of-the-art of the platform economy research. We examine a total of 1775 articles and 71,185 corresponding cited references indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection database using citation analysis, document co-citation analysis, and social network analysis. These separate yet complementary analytical tools provide us with interesting insights into patterns of platform economy studies. Our analysis reveals four distinct research clusters that illustrate the intellectual structure of the platform economy field. We also examine and discuss in detail the integration of ethics into platform literature. Our research portrays and categorizes the key ethical issues associated with digital platforms into four ethical dimensions that demand urgent attention.