The mediated effects of social support in professional online communities on crowdworker engagement in micro-task crowdworking

Abstract Despite the growing popularity of crowdworking platforms, crowdworker engagement and its antecedents are still unexplored. This paper investigates how social support in professional crowdworking online communities affects worker engagement in micro-task crowdworking (MTCW). We know from organizational settings that social support is a central antecedent of work engagement, as it creates a sense of identification and enhances experienced meaningfulness of work, which in turn affects engagement. In MTCW this social antecedent is challenging as the work setting rarely provides workers with social support from requesters or platforms. However, workers frequently participate in professional crowdworking online communities that function as an alternative source of social support. So far, it remains unclear whether and how this type of social support contributes to crowdworker engagement. We argue that social support from professional crowdworking online communities enhances group identification among crowdworkers as well as experienced meaningfulness of doing crowdwork, thus fostering engagement. We conducted a two-wave survey with 181 micro-workers showing that affective social support in online communities enhances crowdworkers' identification and experienced meaningfulness, thereby indirectly affecting engagement in MTCW. We contribute to theory and practice on how to create positive work experiences on virtual platforms, by highlighting the importance of professional online communities.