Characterizing the Global Crowd Workforce: A Cross-Country Comparison of Crowdworker Demographics
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Micro-task crowdsourcing is an international phenomenon that has emerged during the past decade. This paper sets out to explore the characteristics of the international crowd workforce and provides a cross-national comparison of the crowd workforce in ten countries. We provide an analysis and comparison of demographic characteristics and shed light on the significance of micro-task income for workers in different countries. This study is the first large-scale country-level analysis of the characteristics of workers on the platform Figure Eight (formerly CrowdFlower), one of the two platforms dominating the micro-task market. We find large differences between the characteristics of the crowd workforces of different countries, both regarding demography and regarding the importance of micro-task income for workers. Furthermore, we find that the composition of the workforce in the ten countries was largely stable across samples taken at different points in time.
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