To understand human behavior, social scientists need people and data. In the last decade, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) emerged as a flexible, affordable, and reliable source of human participants and was widely adopted by academics. Yet despite MTurk’s utility, some have questioned whether researchers should continue using the platform on ethical grounds. The brunt of their concern is that people on MTurk are financially insecure, subjected to abuse, and earning inhumane wages. We investigated these issues with two random and representative surveys of the U.S. MTurk population (N = 4,094). The surveys revealed: 1) the financial situation of people on MTurk mirrors the general population, 2) the vast majority of people do not find MTurk stressful or requesters abusive, and 3) MTurk offers flexibility and benefits that most people value above more traditional work. In addition, people reported it is possible to earn about 9 dollars per hour and said they would not trade the flexibility of MTurk for less than 25 dollars per hour. Altogether, our data are important for assessing whether MTurk is an ethical place for behavioral research. We close with ways researchers can promote wage equity, ensuring MTurk is a place for affordable, high-quality, and ethical data.
Evaluating Amazon's Mechanical Turk as a Tool for Experimental Behavioral Research