Job changing frequency and experimental decisions: A field study of migrant workers in the manufacturing industry

Migrant workers form an important part of the labor force in the economic development of many countries. Their turnover decisions may affect the performance of manufacturing industries. It is therefore important to understand what kind of individual behavioral preferences affect their job changing frequency. In this study, a lab-in-the-field experiment was conducted 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. We found that subjects who were more risk seeking changed jobs more frequently. We also used job record data from the platform and conducted an empirical analysis to investigate one explanation for this result: risk-seeking subjects possess more optimistic expectations of potential job opportunities and 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 excessive job-changing behavior.