A Disquieting Lack of Evidence for Disintermediation in a Home-Cleaning Platform

We study a sample of data from an online platform that matches home cleaners with people who want their homes cleaned. The dataset has a key feature: it reports with high frequency the geographic distances between the cleaners and their appointed residences during both the cleaners’ working hours and off hours—viz., anytime the app is open on their phones. For example, we observe 57 and 46 distance snapshots a day for the mean and median cleaner, respectively. We use these distance measurements to test whether the cleaners disintermediate the work, returning to the residences to perform some undisclosed cleanings for which they will not have to pay the platform middleman its cut. We find no evidence of such disintermediation—in fact, we find strong evidence to the contrary. Specifically, we will argue that no more than one in 83 relationships formed on the app will end in disintermediation.