Measuring Motivations of Crowdworkers: The Multidimensional Crowdworker Motivation Scale

Crowd employment is a new form of short term and flexible employment which has emerged during the past decade. For understanding this new form of employment, it is crucial to understand the underlying motivations of the workforce involved in it. This paper presents the Multidimensional Crowdworker Motivation Scale (MCMS), a scale for measuring the motivation of crowdworkers on micro-task platforms. The scale is theoretically grounded in Self-Determination Theory and tailored specifically to the context of crowdsourced micro-labor. The MCMS was validated on data collected in ten countries and three income groups. Furthermore, measurement invariance tests showed that motivations measured with the MCMS are comparable across countries and income groups. This work constitutes a first step towards understanding the motivations of the international crowd workforce.