There is currently an increasing trend among the American working population to voluntarily join the gig economy. New terms like the gig economy, sharing economy, internet freelancing, and eLancing have been created to understand this emerging trend among today's workforce. There is a small, yet highly relevant, body of scholarly literature in human resource management that is focused specifically on the eLancing economy as a subset of the gig economy. The purpose of this research is to acknowledge and contribute to this timely literature, which has adequately recognized the enormous potential of this new trend of working. Grounded in the psychology of working theory, a theoretical typology of eLancers is proposed based on the workers' level of volition to be able to choose eLancing as their employment. Further, various predictors such as demographics and personality characteristics were explored on the basis of which eLancers can be classified into types. The study also proposes that different types of eLancers differ in their attitudinal and behavioral work and life outcomes. Prior research has shown that career decisions made by individuals with high work volition relate to higher levels of overall well-being. Hence, classifying eLancers on the basis of their varying levels of volition can help organizations understand which type of eLancer might experience what level of attitudinal and behavioral outcomes.

The Psychology of Working Theory (PWT; Duffy, Blustein, Diemer, & Autin, 2016) was recently proposed as an empirically testable approach to understanding the work processes of those for whom work decisions are influenced by contextual factors and who engage in work for reasons other than satisfaction. In the present study of 285 adults, I investigated the relationships between marginalization, economic resources, work volition, career adaptability, and decent work. I found that work volition, career adaptability, and economic resources all uniquely predicted decent work. I also found that greater economic resources and lower marginalization predicted greater work volition. Economic resources and marginalization have a significant negative correlation, and work volition significantly predicted career adaptability. I failed to support the hypotheses that greater marginalization would predict lower decent work experiences when accounting for other variables and that greater economic resources and lower marginalization would predict greater career adaptability. I identified two alternative models for the data. A model with only work volition and career adaptability predicting decent work provided an adequate fit. A model with only work volition predicting career adaptability provided mixed results. This study provides empirical support for the initial propositions of the PWT, provides further evidence for the importance of contextual variables in work experiences, and identifies several key factors that lead individuals to attain a decent work experience.

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