A data-driven analysis of workers' earnings on Amazon Mechanical Turk
A growing number of people are working as part of on-line crowd work. Crowd work is often thought to be low wage work. However, we know little about the wage distribution in practice and what causes low/high earnings in this setting. We recorded 2,676 workers performing 3.8 million tasks on Amazon M...
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sg-smu-ink.sis_research-52122018-12-27T09:44:00Z A data-driven analysis of workers' earnings on Amazon Mechanical Turk HARA, Kotaro ADAMS, Abigail MILLAND, Kristy SAVAGE, Saiph CALLISON-BURCH, Chris BIGHAM, Jeffrey P. A growing number of people are working as part of on-line crowd work. Crowd work is often thought to be low wage work. However, we know little about the wage distribution in practice and what causes low/high earnings in this setting. We recorded 2,676 workers performing 3.8 million tasks on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Our task-level analysis revealed that workers earned a median hourly wage of only ~$2/h, and only 4% earned more than $7.25/h. While the average requester pays more than $11/h, lower-paying requesters post much more work. Our wage calculations are influenced by how unpaid work is accounted for, e.g., time spent searching for tasks, working on tasks that are rejected, and working on tasks that are ultimately not submitted. We further explore the characteristics of tasks and working patterns that yield higher hourly wages. Our analysis informs platform design and worker tools to create a more positive future for crowd work. 2018-04-01T07:00:00Z text application/pdf https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/4209 info:doi/10.1145/3173574.3174023 https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/5212/viewcontent/Hara_AData_DrivenAnalysisOfWorkersEearningsOnAmazonMechanicalTurk_CHI2018.pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems eng Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Crowdsourcing Amazon Mechanical Turk Hourly wage Databases and Information Systems Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing |
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Crowdsourcing Amazon Mechanical Turk Hourly wage Databases and Information Systems Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing HARA, Kotaro ADAMS, Abigail MILLAND, Kristy SAVAGE, Saiph CALLISON-BURCH, Chris BIGHAM, Jeffrey P. A data-driven analysis of workers' earnings on Amazon Mechanical Turk |
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A growing number of people are working as part of on-line crowd work. Crowd work is often thought to be low wage work. However, we know little about the wage distribution in practice and what causes low/high earnings in this setting. We recorded 2,676 workers performing 3.8 million tasks on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Our task-level analysis revealed that workers earned a median hourly wage of only ~$2/h, and only 4% earned more than $7.25/h. While the average requester pays more than $11/h, lower-paying requesters post much more work. Our wage calculations are influenced by how unpaid work is accounted for, e.g., time spent searching for tasks, working on tasks that are rejected, and working on tasks that are ultimately not submitted. We further explore the characteristics of tasks and working patterns that yield higher hourly wages. Our analysis informs platform design and worker tools to create a more positive future for crowd work. |
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HARA, Kotaro ADAMS, Abigail MILLAND, Kristy SAVAGE, Saiph CALLISON-BURCH, Chris BIGHAM, Jeffrey P. |
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HARA, Kotaro ADAMS, Abigail MILLAND, Kristy SAVAGE, Saiph CALLISON-BURCH, Chris BIGHAM, Jeffrey P. |
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HARA, Kotaro |
title |
A data-driven analysis of workers' earnings on Amazon Mechanical Turk |
title_short |
A data-driven analysis of workers' earnings on Amazon Mechanical Turk |
title_full |
A data-driven analysis of workers' earnings on Amazon Mechanical Turk |
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A data-driven analysis of workers' earnings on Amazon Mechanical Turk |
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A data-driven analysis of workers' earnings on Amazon Mechanical Turk |
title_sort |
data-driven analysis of workers' earnings on amazon mechanical turk |
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Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University |
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2018 |
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https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/4209 https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/5212/viewcontent/Hara_AData_DrivenAnalysisOfWorkersEearningsOnAmazonMechanicalTurk_CHI2018.pdf |
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