Behavioral Changes of MTurkers during the COVID-19 Pandemic

We study the changes in economic behaviors of Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers due to the COVID19 pandemic, and compare it to a pre-pandemic MTurker sample, a student sample, and a representative sample of the United States. We find that MTurkers during the pandemic behave differently than previous MTurkers in many contexts, even after accounting for changes in demographic composition. These MTurkers behave more similarly to a representative sample than a student sample. Additionally, we revisit gender differences in preferences and document fewer and smaller differences in many contexts. These results help contextualize online research conducted during the pandemic.

Keywords: Online Experiments, Economic Preferences, Gender, COVID-19 Pandemic

JEL Classification: C90, D90, D91

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Aksoy, Billur and Chadd, Ian and Osun, Elif and Ozbay, Erkut, Behavioral Changes of MTurkers during the COVID-19 Pandemic (August 26, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3920502 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3920502