A new study led by scholars at Yale University, Rice University, and the University of Toronto has uncovered a racial earning gap between White and non-White gig workers. However, the authors found a solution to eliminating the racial gap: changing the platform’s rating system from a five-star scale to a thumbs up/thumbs down system.
In an examination of nearly 70,000 customer ratings on an unnamed online platform that used a five-star rating system for gig work, the study authors found a pattern of lower ratings for non-White gig workers (4.72 stars) compared to their White counterparts (4.79 stars). These lower ratings caused non-White workers to earn an average of 91 cents for each dollar earned by White workers.
However, when the platform changed its rating system to a thumbs up/thumbs down system, racial bias was less pronounced. The binary rating scale resulted in an average of 95.9 percent positive ratings for White gig workers and 95.4 percent for non-White workers.
The authors believe their findings suggest that by changing gig workers’ rating options to a simple “good” versus “bad” system, platforms force their customers to focus solely on a worker’s performance, eliminating opportunities for their personal biases to affect a gig worker’s evaluation. While some could argue the five-star scale provides more nuance to a worker’s performance, the authors found this loss of detail is essentially irrelevant as most customers (85 percent) already give five star ratings.
