Paper Info
Title
Research Note - Are Online Labor Markets Spot Markets for Tasks? A Field Experiment on the Behavioral Response to Wage Cuts.
Abstract
In some online labor markets, workers are paid by the task, choose what tasks to work on, and have little or no interaction with their (usually anonymous) buyer/employer. These markets look like true spot markets for tasks rather than markets for employment. Despite appearances, we find via a field experiment that workers act more like parties to an employment contract: workers quickly form wage reference points and react negatively to proposed wage cuts by quitting. However, they can be mollified with “reasonable” justifications for why wages are being cut, highlighting the importance of fairness considerations in their decision making. We find some evidence that “unreasonable” justifications for wage cuts reduce subsequent work quality. We also find that not explicitly presenting the worker with a decision about continuing to work eliminates “quits,” with no apparent reduction in work quality. One interpretation for this finding is that workers have a strong expectation that they are party to a quasi-employment relationship where terms are not changed, and the default behavior is to continue working.
Year
Venue
Field
2016
Information Systems Research
Economics,Microeconomics,Efficiency wage,Employment contract,Labour economics,Marketing,Wage
DocType
Volume
Issue
Journal
27
2
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
3
0.38
6
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Daniel L. Chen161.20
John Joseph Horton259831.74