This research delves into the intricate interplay between mood and ethical perceptions within the context of crowdsourcing online labour markets. The study employs a carefully crafted experimental design, conducted in November 2021, involving two distinct groups: the benchmark group, serving as the control, and the treatment group, subjected to mood induction through film exposure. The benchmark group is presented with a neutral placebo film, while the treatment group is treated to a comedy film. By using OLS estimation methods, the paper provides evidence of the impact of positive mood manipulation, which remarkably enhances individuals’ ethical perceptions, fosters value co-creation, and augments the quality of their relationships with the platform. The study's findings strongly indicate that the potent effect of positive mood primarily operates through the lens of the agreeableness trait. This observation sheds light on the intricate psychological mechanisms underlying mood's influence on various outcomes within the online labour market setting. Contributions to the ethical perception, mood research and online-economy literature are discussed.

Online labor markets have gained significant importance in recent years, drawing considerable attention in academia and practice.These platforms enable workers worldwide to sell their labor services to a global pool of clients.However, the challenge lies in motivating workers effectively to enhance their productivity.To address this issue, we employ the selfdetermination theory and present a model that elucidates motivation's impact on productivity across various payment schemes.Additionally, we leverage the psychological trait theory and its suggested taxonomy to explore how compensation policies in online labor markets affect incentives differently based on individual differences.Our experiment tests predictions from a formal labor supply and productivity model for workers with varying compensation levels.The results indicate that intrinsic workers exhibit higher productivity when bonus rewards are introduced.Furthermore, our study confirms the presence of heterogeneous personality effects, emphasizing that increased worker productivity is primarily associated with conscientiousness and agreeableness traits.These findings illuminate the intricate mechanisms governing worker motivation and engagement in paid crowdsourcing environments.They provide valuable theoretical and managerial insights for researchers and crowdsourcing practitioners aiming to enhance worker productivity in online tasks.

We investigate the impact of non-cognitive skills on the quality of task-specific outcomes by conducting a quasi-experiment on a well-known online crowdsourcing platform. We show that worker’s performance varies with personality traits, gender, human capital, crowdsourcing experience and work effort. Regarding the effects of non-cognitive skills, we find that worker’s performance in online microtasks is positively related to extraversion and agreeableness. The positive impact of extroverts is also revealed when performance is adjusted for task completion time. These findings provide implications regarding the integration of selection mechanisms in online labour matching platforms aiming in uncovering micro-workers’ soft skills to improve performance and consequently the allocation of resources in online microtasks.

Abstract The present study focuses on the effect of emoticon use in online consumer reviews (OCRs) on consumers’ booking intention and the moderating effect of consumer personal characteristics. Consumers’ prior experience and their reliance on OCRs are embedded in the research model. A 2 × 2 (review valence * emoticon use) experimental study is designed, and an econometric model is used. Results show that the interaction between review valence and emoticons affect booking intention. Consumers with no prior experience are mainly affected by the cognitive aspects of their experience (i.e. review credibility and attitude toward the review) while experienced consumers are affected by the experiential aspects of booking process (i.e. entertainment, satisfaction and social influence). Consumers that rely on OCRs are affected by emoticons while consumers without review reliance are affected by emoticons only in the case of positive reviews. The personalization of websites and the provision of a focused list of emoticons can be adopted by managers to enhance OCRs effectiveness and the online shopping experience as a whole.