Toward a Contextual Theory of Turnover Intention in Online Crowdworking

Abstract

Online crowdworking marketplaces represent an emergent labor market. Despite the ample recent literature on crowdworking marketplaces, we still lack a clear understanding of the antecedents to worker turnover behavior in such labor markets. This paper integrates the extant crowdworking literature with traditional theories of worker turnover intention, boundary spanning, and online communities to develop a Contextual Model of Turnover Intention in online Crowdworking (COMTIC). Conceptually, COMTIC complements the traditional organizational turnover perspective with a contextualized boundary spanning perspective and illustrates how the two theories work together to more accurately depict the crowdworker turnover intention. The model is tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling and is largely confirmed by the results. We discuss the theoretical implications of the proposed COMTIC framework and offer practical insights for existent and future crowdworking marketplaces