Motivating gig workers – evidence from a field experiment

Abstract

We study the role of risk aversion and intrinsic motivation in how the payment scheme affects the performance of an online platform’s freelancers. Our RCT varied whether freelancers were only paid a pure sales commission or a lower commission combined with a fixed payment per order to provide insurance against income fluctuations. We do not find evidence for effect heterogeneity with respect to risk aversion, but sizeable heterogeneity with respect to intrinsic motivation: While – in line with standard theory – the treatment reduced performance for less intrinsically motivated workers, it increased performance among workers with a high task motivation.