Existing literature and studies predominantly focus on how crowdsource workers individually complete tasks and projects. Our study examines crowdsource workers' willingness to work collaboratively. We report results from a survey of 122 workers on a leading online labor platform (Upwork) to examine crowd workers' behavioral preferences for collaboration and explore several antecedents of cooperative behaviors. We then test if actual cooperative behavior matches with workers' behavioral preferences through an incentivized social dilemma experiment. We find that respondents cooperate at a higher rate (85%) than reported in previous comparable studies (between 50-75%). This high rate of cooperation is likely explained by an ingroup bias. Using a sequential mediation model we demonstrate the importance of a sense of shared expectations and accountability for cooperation. We contribute to a better understanding of the potential for collaborative work in crowdsourcing by accessing if and what social factors and collective culture exist among crowd workers. We discuss the implications of our results for platform designers by highlighting the importance of platform features that promote shared expectations and improve accountability. Overall, contrary to existing literature and predictions, our results suggest that crowd workers display traits that are more consistent with belonging to a coherent group with a shared collective culture, rather than being anonymous actors in a transaction-based market.
翻译:现有文献和研究主要侧重于众源工人如何单独完成任务和项目。我们的研究审视了众源工人合作的意愿。我们报告在领先的在线劳工平台(Upwork)上对122名工人进行调查的结果,以审查人群工人对协作的偏好,并探讨合作行为的若干前例。然后我们通过激励性社会两难实验,检验实际合作行为是否与工人的行为偏好相符。我们发现,受访者的合作率(85%)高于以往可比研究所报告的(50-75%),这种高合作率很可能由群体偏向来解释。我们使用连续调解模式展示了共同期望和问责对合作感的重要性。我们通过接触人群工人中是否存在的社会因素和集体文化来帮助更好地了解在众包方面协作工作的潜力。我们讨论我们的成果对平台设计者的影响,强调促进共同期望和增强问责制的平台特征的重要性。总体而言,与现有的文献和预测相反,我们的结果表明,人群工人表现出的特征更符合一个具有一致性的团体,而不是匿名的团体。