Towards a Taxonomy of Ethical Considerations in Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is a growing industry, where millions of individuals and businesses have begun tapping into the crowd to perform work. Despite this growth, crowd work and labor contains few regulations. Previous researchers have highlighted examples of ethical challenges organizations and individuals face in crowdsourcing. This paper explores these challenges, using Value Sensitive Design and transparency literature to identify candidate ethical principles in crowdsourcing. Integrating these principles with ethical dilemmas, crowdsourcing models, and affected stakeholders, this research uses a deductive approach to develop a taxonomic framework of ethical considerations in crowdsourcing. The resulting taxonomy provides practical and theoretical contributions. Organizations choosing to use crowdsourcing can refer to the classification to understand ethical implications, as well as accounting for ethical requirements in the design and governance of projects. Researchers can expand the classification to gain understanding of each element and the interrelationships. Finally, we describe specific directions for future research.