A Culturally-Aware Tool for Crowdworkers: Leveraging Chronemics to Support Diverse Work Styles

TL;DR

This paper introduces CultureFit, a culturally-aware tool for crowdworkers that adapts to diverse work styles based on Chronemics, significantly improving earnings for workers from underrepresented cultural backgrounds.

Contribution

It presents the design and evaluation of CultureFit, a novel culturally-aware digital labor tool based on Chronemics, and provides a large dataset for future research.

Findings

CultureFit improved earnings for diverse cultural workers

The study is among the first to evaluate culturally-aware digital labor tools

Provides a dataset with over two million data points on culture and digital work

Abstract

Crowdsourcing markets are expanding worldwide, but often feature standardized interfaces that ignore the cultural diversity of their workers, negatively impacting their well-being and productivity. To transform these workplace dynamics, this paper proposes creating culturally-aware workplace tools, specifically designed to adapt to the cultural dimensions of monochronic and polychronic work styles. We illustrate this approach with "CultureFit," a tool that we engineered based on extensive research in Chronemics and culture theories. To study and evaluate our tool in the real world, we conducted a field experiment with 55 workers from 24 different countries. Our field experiment revealed that CultureFit significantly improved the earnings of workers from cultural backgrounds often overlooked in design. Our study is among the pioneering efforts to examine culturally aware digital labor interventions. It also provides access to a dataset with over two million data points on culture and digital work, which can be leveraged for future research in this emerging field. The paper concludes by discussing the importance and future possibilities of incorporating cultural insights into the design of tools for digital labor.