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Recent shifts in societal discourse have led digital platforms to support equity, inclusivity, and diversity by introducing identity signaling features, e.g., indicators of owner race or gender. In this work, we explore whether, when, and how using those features may impact retailer demand. We tackle this question via a multi-method study. We begin by conducting a controlled experiment on Prolific.co, presenting subjects' with actual Google Places business profiles for a set of Black-owned restaurants in Chicago. We randomly vary the presence of Black-owned and Women-owned labels in these profiles and assess subjects' expectations of popularity and quality along various restaurant dimensions. Our results demonstrate that the Black-owned label, in particular, drives significant increases in all outcomes, with the effects arising primarily from Black and democratically liberal subjects. Next, we conduct an archival analysis of the effect label adoption has on the physical foot traffic that retailers receive, based on SafeGraph's mobile patterns database. Our difference-in-differences estimations yield consistent results; we find evidence of a positive average effect on foot traffic volumes. Further, we show that a rise in visitors from liberal-leaning geographies drives these effects. We discuss implications for digital platform operators and for retailers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most notable changes to emerge from the sharing economy is the striking increase in on-demand services. In this work, we examine how such platforms (e.g. Grubhub, UberEats, and Doordash) affect a particularly important household activity, meal preparation, and dining behaviors of American households. To do so, we exploit the phased entry of the platform Grubhub into US counties from 2005 to 2019 using a difference in difference approach. Results indicate that the availability of an increasingly diversified delivery service leads to a significant reduction in time spent preparing meals within the home. Further, and alarmingly, we find that this impact is associated with an increase in the average BMI of affected persons; indicating an unfavorable dietary shift from healthier home cooking to unhealthier food away from home consumption. Implications for research, consumers, platforms, and public policymakers are discussed within. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]