Labor allocation in paid crowdsourcing: Experimental evidence on positioning, nudges, and prices
Published: Human Computation: Papers from the 2011 AAAI Workshop: 14-19 (2011)
Last updated: 2011-08-08
Summary
This paper reports the results of a natural field experiment where workers from a paid crowdsourcing environment selfselect into tasks and are presumed to have limited attention. In our experiment, workers labeled any of six pictures from a 2 × 3 grid of thumbnail images. In the absence of any incentives, workers exhibit a strong default bias and tend to select images from the top-left (focal) position; the bottomright (non-focal) position, was the least preferred. We attempted to overcome this bias and increase the rate at which workers selected the least preferred task, by using a combination of monetary and non-monetary incentives. We also varied the saliency of these incentives by placing them in either the focal or non-focal position. Although both types caused workers to re-allocate their labor, monetary incentives were more effective. Most interestingly, both types worked better when they were placed in the focal position and made more salient. In fact, salient non-monetary incentives worked about as well as non-salient monetary ones. Our evidence suggests that user interface and cognitive biases play an important role in online labor markets and that salience can be used by employers as a kind of incentive multiplier.
Paper links
Cite
@inproceedings{horton2011laborallocationinpaidcrowdsourcingexperimentalevidenceonpositioningnudgesandprices,
title = {{Labor Allocation in Paid Crowdsourcing: Experimental Evidence on Positioning, Nudges and Prices}},
author = {Chandler, Dana and Horton, John J.},
booktitle = {Human Computation: Papers from the 2011 AAAI Workshop},
year = {2011},
pages = {14-19},
url = {https://john-joseph-horton.com/papers/combined_paper_packet.pdf}
}