PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

One of the earliest questions in paid crowdsourcing research was addressing the motivation for performing crowdwork in general or a certain task (Kaufmann, N., Schulze T., Veit, D., 2011). From those early findings arose the interest in optimal task design. The goal was to design tasks to maximize output in quality and quantity but also job satisfaction. Nevertheless on platforms focusing on microtasks current findings concerning the effect of task design seem contradictory. While Brawley and Pury (2016) found nearly no relation between classical aspects of job design and job satisfaction other studies suggest that at least task identity has an impact on satisfaction and quality (e.g Chandler & Kapelner, 2013). Additionally, Schulze et al. (2011) identified assets crowdworker wish or expect from attractive tasks on microtask-platforms e.g. payment, reputation of the requester or multiple availability of a task. Still it remains unclear, which aspects in task design are important and if they are specific for crowdwork. This is due to two reasons: first, previous studies were focusing on particular sets of task design aspects only, e.g. meaningfulness. Second, the distinction between satisfaction of a single task – a situational satisfaction – and job satisfaction on a platform in general were not considered. Especially this determination of these two forms of satisfaction is of concern as both are distinct measurements in normally contracted employment (Wegge, van Dick, Fisher, West, & Dawson, 2006). Situational satisfaction derives from negative and positive affect during the work as the affective events theory (AET; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) states and is a better predictor for situational output e.g. situational performance and behavior. In contrast the general job satisfaction predicts more stable outputs e.g. turnover intentions over the time (Grube, Schroer, Hentzschel, & Hertel, 2008). In this study we examined whether in crowdwork there is a situational task satisfaction that is related to task design aspects. Furthermore we tested if this is mediated by affect. Therefore we surveyed n = 107 crowdworker on a German microtask-platform. Participants were asked to revive via event reconstruction method approach the last task performed. Subsequently they filled out questionnaires about general task design, crowdwork specific aspects, as well as affect and satisfaction during this certain task. Task satisfaction was associated with decision-making autonomy, task significance, task identity, information processing and skill variety but also crowdwork specific aspects like a good language of description or high reputation of requester. Both types of aspects were partially mediated by positive and negative affect. We reason that the affective experience during task completion has a huge impact on satisfaction with crowdwork. The AET can be transferred to crowdwork and as explanatory power as well. Due to limitations of our survey approach we want to examine in a next step the longitudinal experiences of crowdworker, especially the relation of situational aspects and task satisfaction in connection to the general experience on a platform. #### References Brawley, A. M., & Pury, C. L.S. (2016). Work experiences on MTurk: Job satisfaction, turnover, and information sharing. *Computers in Human Behavior*, 54, 531–546. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.08.031 Chandler, D., & Kapelner, A. (2013). Breaking monotony with meaning: Motivation in crowdsourcing markets. *Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization*, 90, 123–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2013.03.003 Grube, A., Schroer, J., Hentzschel, C., & Hertel, G. (2008). The event reconstruction method: An efficient measure of experience-based job satisfaction. *Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology*, 81, 669–689. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317907X251578 Kaufmann, N., Schulze, T., & Veit, D. (2011). More than fun and money. Worker Motivation in Crowdsourcing-A Study on Mechanical Turk. In *AMCIS*, 11, 1-11. Schulze, T., Seedorfer, S., Geiger, D., Kaufmann, N., & Schader, M. (2011). Exploring task properties in crowdsourcing-an empirical study on mechanical turk. *ECIS 2011 Proceedings*. 122 Wegge, J., van Dick, R., Fisher, G. K., West, M. A., & Dawson, J. F. (2006). A test of basic assumptions of affective events theory (AET) in call centre worker. *British Journal of Management*, 17, 237–254. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2006.00489.x Weiss, H. M., & Cropanzano, R. (1996). Affective events theory: A theoretical discussion of the structure, causes and consequences of affective experiences at work.