Do workers discriminate against their out-group employers? Evidence from an online platform economy

Sher Afghan Asad, Ritwik Banerjee and Joydeep Bhattacharya

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2023, vol. 216, issue C, 221-242

Abstract: We study possible labor market discrimination by workers towards their out-group employers as manifested via social preferences (altruism and reciprocity). We run a well-powered, model-based, lab-in-the-field experiment, recruiting 6,000 white American worker subjects from Amazon's M-Turk platform for a real-effort task. We also hire trainer subjects, our stand-in for employers, from a university. To worker subjects, we randomly (and unobtrusively) reveal the racial identity of the trainers, who may be white or black. We find evidence that white workers may discriminate against white employers based on altruism (working harder due to concern for the employer's well-being). However, they may discriminate in favor of their white employers based on reciprocity (working harder because of a small gift). From the perspective of black (white) employers, altruism evokes a stronger (weaker) effort response, but gift-giving has no (positive) effect. Taken together, the combined effect of altruism and reciprocity on worker effort is the same for black and white employers.

Keywords: Discrimination; Worker-to-employer; Social preferences; Taste-based discrimination; Online economy; Mechanical Turk; Structural behavioral economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D91 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:216:y:2023:i:c:p:221-242

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2023.10.002

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