Feedback and Performance in Crowd Work: a Real Effort Experiment

Online labor markets gain momentum: Frequently, requesters post micro-tasks and workers choose which tasks to complete for a payment. In virtual, short-lived, and commonly one-shot labor relations, one challenge is to properly incentivize worker effort and quality of work. We present a real effort experiment on a crowd work platform studying the effect of feedback on worker performance. Rank order tournaments might or might not disclose a worker’s current competitive position. One might expect that feedback on the competitive position spurs competition and, in effect, effort and performance. On the contrary, we find evidence that in rank order tournaments, performance feedback tends to have a negative impact on workers’ performance. This effect is mediated by task completion. Furthermore when playing against strong competitors, feedback makes workers more likely to quit the task altogether and, thus, show lower performance. When the competitors are weak, workers tend to complete the task but with reduced effort. Thus, providing performance feedback might not be advisable in crowd labor markets.