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#Crowdwork4dev:Engineering Increases in Crowd Labor Demand to Increase the Effectiveness of Crowd Work as a Poverty-Reduction Tool

Schriner, Andrew W
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1445341861

Abstract Details

2015, MS, University of Cincinnati, Engineering and Applied Science: Environmental Engineering.
Globally, in 2010, 2.4 billion people still lived in extreme poverty, earning less than $2 per day. This thesis shows that crowd work has the potential to significantly reduce global extreme poverty – an approach I call CrowdWork4Dev. CrowdWork4Dev is fundamentally about taking a new approach to development interventions to fight poverty – taking the stance that engineering increases in employment is the most effective way to address deficits in basic needs. Crowd work is especially well-suited to fighting poverty for a number of reasons: 1) it is inherently distributable to any place with internet access 2) simple crowd tasks require no specialized skills, making them broadly accessible to almost anyone and 3) the price of simple crowd work makes it both economically viable for requesters and advantageous for developing-country workers. In this thesis I analyze the interaction between the complex problem domain of poverty and the candidate solution of crowd work to determine where to apply solution effort. I argue that increasing the amount of crowd work available on crowdsourcing platforms that are accessible to developing-country workers is the lynchpin. In support of this goal, this thesis contributes the conceptual model of “the crowdsourcing stack” – common components of most crowd applications – and introduces Flowbuilder, a set of software tools implementing a portion of the crowdsourcing stack intended to make implementing a crowd-backed data project faster and easier. The capabilities of Flowbuilder are showcased through three example use-cases. This thesis shows the potential of crowd work to empower many who currently struggle in the face of limited opportunity, and takes steps toward implementing CrowdWork4Dev as a solution.
James Uber, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Dominic Boccelli, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Daniel Oerther, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
77 p.
Information Technology
crowdsourcing; human computation; poverty; economics; economic development

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Schriner, A. W. (2015). #Crowdwork4dev:Engineering Increases in Crowd Labor Demand to Increase the Effectiveness of Crowd Work as a Poverty-Reduction Tool [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1445341861

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Schriner, Andrew. #Crowdwork4dev:Engineering Increases in Crowd Labor Demand to Increase the Effectiveness of Crowd Work as a Poverty-Reduction Tool. 2015. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1445341861.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Schriner, Andrew. "#Crowdwork4dev:Engineering Increases in Crowd Labor Demand to Increase the Effectiveness of Crowd Work as a Poverty-Reduction Tool." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1445341861

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1445341861
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© 2015, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.
Release 3.2.12