Turking overtime: how participant characteristics and behavior vary over time and day on Amazon Mechanical Turk

Antonio A. Arechar (), Gordon T. Kraft-Todd and David G. Rand ()
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Antonio A. Arechar: Yale University
Gordon T. Kraft-Todd: Yale University
David G. Rand: Yale University

Journal of the Economic Science Association, 2017, vol. 3, issue 1, No 1, 11 pages

Abstract: Abstract Online experiments allow researchers to collect datasets at times not typical of laboratory studies. We recruit 2336 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk to examine if participant characteristics and behaviors differ depending on whether the experiment is conducted during the day versus night, and on weekdays versus weekends. Participants make incentivized decisions involving prosociality, punishment, and discounting, and complete a demographic and personality survey. We find no time or day differences in behavior, but do find that participants at nights and on weekends are less experienced with online studies; on weekends are less reflective; and at night are less conscientious and more neurotic. These results are largely robust to finer-grained measures of time and day. We also find that those who participated earlier in the course of the study are more experienced, reflective, and agreeable, but less charitable than later participants.

Keywords: Cooperation; Honesty; Decision-making; Time of day; MTurk; Self-control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C80 C90 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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DOI: 10.1007/s40881-017-0035-0

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