The Hidden Costs and Benefits of Monitoring in the Gig Economy

Monitoring, a digital surveillance technology that allows employers to track the activities of workers, is ubiquitous in the gig economy wherein the workforce is geographically dispersed. However, workers are often reluctant to be monitored because of privacy concerns, resulting in a hidden economic cost for employers as workers tend to demand higher wages for monitored jobs. To help employers make informed decisions on whether they should adopt monitoring and how to design monitoring policies, we investigate how three common dimensions of monitoring affect workers’ willingness to accept monitored jobs as well as the underlying mechanisms through online experiments on two gig economy platforms (Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) and Prolific). The three dimensions of monitoring are intensity (how much information is collected), transparency (whether the monitoring policy is disclosed to workers), and control (whether workers can remove sensitive information). We find that, as the monitoring intensity increases, workers become less willing to accept monitoring because of elevated privacy concerns. Furthermore, we find that being transparent about the monitoring policy increases workers’ willingness to accept monitoring only when the monitoring intensity is low. Transparent disclosure does not reduce privacy concerns over high-intensity monitoring. Interestingly, providing control over high-intensity monitoring does not significantly reduce workers’ privacy concerns either, rendering this well-intentioned policy ineffective. Finally, females are more willing to accept monitored jobs than males as they perceive higher payment protection from monitoring and have lower privacy concerns. On average, we estimate that the compensations required for workers to accept monitoring are $1.8/hour for AMT workers and $1.6/hour for Prolific workers, which translate to roughly 37.5% and 28.6% of their average hourly wages, respectively.