Job Changing Frequency and Experimental Decisions: A Field Study of Migrant Workers in the Manufacturing Industry

Li, Lingfang (Ivy), Yuting Wu, Xun Zhu, Rongwei Chu and Iris Hung

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Migrant workers form a very important part of the labor force in the economic development of many countries. Their turnover decisions may affect the stability of the performance of manufacturing industries. It is important to understand what kind of individual behavioral preferences may affect their job changing frequency. This study conducts a lab-in-the-field experiment through a large online-to-offline job-matching platform to elicit manufacturing migrant workers’ preferences, such as uncertainty attitudes, intertemporal choices and social preferences, especially difference aversion. The study also surveyed their demographic characteristics and other factors related to their job choices. We find that subjects who are more risk seeking change jobs more frequently. We also use the job record data from the platform and conduct empirical analysis to investigate one explanation of this result: risk-seeking subjects possess more optimistic expectations of potential job opportunities and they are more likely to sample different jobs and thus generate higher job changing frequency. Our findings may help policy-makers and employers design policies or mechanisms to prevent exorbitant job-changing behavior.

Keywords: migrant worker; preference; job turnover; job search; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 J01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-mig
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:115472

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