To Cooperate or to Compete in the Gig Economy? Endorsements and the Performance of Freelancers in Online Labor Markets
Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: Online labor markets connect buyers with gig workers across several task categories. A buyer evaluates workers’ quality based on their past performance encapsulated in ratings and reviews. However, these ratings can be inflated and arguably fail to assess workers’ true quality. Literature shows that worker characteristics like skills, experience, and heuristic cues can measure worker quality. In this study, we explore how gig workers’ personality traits in terms of Social Value Orientation (SVO) affects their performance on an online labor platform. We measure SVO from peer endorsements among workers on an online labor platform. Our results show that a cooperative SVO, where gig workers endorse each other, is more beneficial to the stakeholders of online labor platforms than competitive and individualistic SVO. We also explore how such cooperative behavior evolves by leveraging social network analysis methods to examine the endorsements generated among gig workers. We observe that reciprocity, homophily and worker popularity induces such cooperative behavior.
Authors: Tripathi, Sambit, Deokar, Amit, Karhade, Prasanna, Li, Xiaobai
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6990074622