Is it ethical to use Mechanical Turk for behavioral research? Relevant data from a representative survey of MTurk participants and wages

Abstract

To understand human behavior, social scientists need people and data. In the last decade, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) emerged as a flexible, affordable, and reliable source of human participants and was widely adopted by academics. Yet despite MTurk’s utility, some have questioned whether researchers should continue using the platform on ethical grounds. The brunt of their concern is that people on MTurk are financially insecure, subject to abuse, and earn inhumane wages. We investigated these issues with two representative probability surveys of the U.S. MTurk population (N = 4094). The surveys revealed: (1) the financial situation of people on MTurk mirrors the general population, (2) most participants do not find MTurk stressful or requesters abusive, and (3) MTurk offers flexibility and benefits that most people value above other options for work. People reported it is possible to earn more than $10 per hour and said they would not trade the flexibility of MTurk for less than $25 per hour. Altogether, our data are important for assessing whether MTurk is an ethical place for research.