An increasing number of workers participate in online labor markets. In contrast to traditional employment relationships within firms, the interaction between online workers and their employers are short and impersonal, which makes motivating online workers more challenging. We present results from two large-scale controlled field experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk investigating the effects of monetary rewards and soft leadership techniques on output quantity and quality. In the first study, we investigate the effects of monetary rewards and simple upfront messages (praise or reference points). Monetary rewards increase quantity significantly. Sending simple messages, however, can have a significantly negative effect on quantity. The second study concentrates on the effects of communication based on charismatic leadership techniques. Charismatic communication techniques can also backfire if only a subset of them is used, whereas using a broad set including quantitative goals increases output quantity significantly. Neither intervention had a significant effect on the quality of work.

越来越多的工人参与在线劳动力市场。与企业内部的传统雇佣关系相比，在线员工与其雇主之间的互动时间短且没有人情味，这使得激励在线员工更具挑战性。我们展示了 Amazon Mechanical Turk 上的两个大规模受控现场实验的结果，研究了金钱奖励和软领导技术对产出数量和质量的影响。在第一项研究中，我们调查了金钱奖励和简单的前期信息（表扬或参考点）的影响。货币奖励显着增加数量。然而，发送简单的消息会对数量产生显着的负面影响。第二项研究侧重于基于魅力型领导技巧的沟通效果。如果仅使用其中的一个子集，魅力型沟通技术也会适得其反，而使用包括定量目标在内的广泛集合会显着增加输出数量。两种干预都没有对工作质量产生显着影响。