Lottery-Based Payment Mechanism for Microtasks

We propose using lotteries as an alternative payment mechanism through which to incentivize and recruit workers to microtasking. We present initial findings gained via experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk and focus on discussing the benefits and potential pitfalls in employing a lottery-based payment mechanism for microtasking. lottery-based Payment Mechanism Over the last few years, paid microtasking, where workers complete small tasks for pennies at a time, has emerged as an alternate source of income for many people around the world. We introduce a alternative: lottery-based payments. In this payment mechanism, workers earn lottery tickets by completing microtasks. Each successfully completed task earns a ticket, hence completing more tasks gets them more tickets, thereby increasing their chance of winning. Payments may be monetary, or other material rewards such as tickets to music concerts or sport events, T-shirts, monthly bus passes and so on. In general, we assume an internal lottery is held solely amongst workers, though this need not be the case.