Getting Gig Workers to Do More by Doing Good: Field Experimental Evidence From Online Platform Labor Marketplaces

This article describes randomized field experiments implemented on two online labor market platforms examining the effect of employer charitable giving on a source of human capital that is becoming increasingly important to firms: the “gig” worker. It provides support that a message about charitable...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Organization & environment 2021-09, Vol.34 (3), p.387-412
Main Author: Burbano, Vanessa C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Charities
Competitive advantage
Donations
Employee behavior
Employees
Employers
Experiments
Field tests
Gig economy
Heterogeneity
Human capital
Influence
Information dissemination
Information sharing
Internet
Labor
Labor market
Motivation
Perceptions
Philanthropy
Responsiveness
Social responsibility
Strategic management
Workers
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Summary:This article describes randomized field experiments implemented on two online labor market platforms examining the effect of employer charitable giving on a source of human capital that is becoming increasingly important to firms: the “gig” worker. It provides support that a message about charitable giving increases gig workers’ willingness to complete extra work, and that prosocially oriented gig workers are most responsive. A process experiment reveals that sharing information about charitable giving increases how close workers feel to their gig employer, and that the effect is greater if workers previously felt distant from (as opposed to already felt close to) their employer. This article provides insight into gig workers’ nonpecuniary motivation, explores heterogeneity in this type of workers’ responsiveness to charitable giving and illustrates how online platform labor markets can be used as a setting to implement field experiments examining effects of employer-level characteristics on gig worker behavior.
ISSN:1086-0266
1552-7417
DOI:10.1177/1086026619846455