Abstract

Due to the lack of face-to-face interactions in online labor market, employers often have to rely on bidding descriptions to assess the interpersonal aspects of freelancers. Since politeness is a potential indicator of one’s willingness and ability to facilitate cooperation, our study examines the impact of politeness in bidding descriptions on hiring decisions. Based on data collected from Freelancer.com, we differentiate the politeness of bidding descriptions with textual analysis. Surprisingly, our findings reveal that politeness in bidding descriptions is negatively associated with the probability of getting hired, and the association is negatively moderated by the capability of freelancers and the textual similarity of bidding descriptions. Specifically, the association is positive for incapable workers or unique bidding descriptions but becomes more negative for capable workers or bidding descriptions similar to others. The findings contribute novel insights on the contingent impact of politeness in bidding descriptions in online labor market.

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Paper Number 1367; Track Crowds; Short Paper

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