"Sometimes it's like putting the track in front of the rushing train": Having to be 'on call' for work limits the temporal flexibility of crowdworkers

Lascău, Laura, Brumby, Duncan P., Gould, Sandy J. J. and Cox, Anna L. 2024. "Sometimes it's like putting the track in front of the rushing train": Having to be 'on call' for work limits the temporal flexibility of crowdworkers. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 31 (2) , 18. 10.1145/3635145

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Abstract

Research suggests that the temporal flexibility advertised to crowdworkers by crowdsourcing platforms is limited by both client-imposed constraints (e.g., strict completion times) and crowdworkers' tooling practices (e.g., multitasking). In this paper, we explore an additional contributor to workers' limited temporal flexibility: the design of crowdsourcing platforms, namely requiring crowdworkers to be `on call' for work. We conducted two studies to investigate the impact of having to be `on call' on workers' schedule control and job control. We find that being `on call' impacted: (1) participants' ability to schedule their time and stick to planned work hours, and (2) the pace at which participants worked and took breaks. The results of the two studies suggest that the `on-demand' nature of crowdsourcing platforms can limit workers' temporal flexibility by reducing schedule control and job control. We conclude the paper by discussing the implications of the results for: (a) crowdworkers, (b) crowdsourcing platforms, and (c) the wider platform economy.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Computer Science & Informatics
Publisher:	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
ISSN:	1073-0516
Funders:	UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	26 September 2023
Date of Acceptance:	2 August 2023
Last Modified:	14 Feb 2024 13:24
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/162749

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