The Effect of COVID-19 on Amazon Mturk

This paper examines the effect of COVID-19 on experiments run using Amazon Mturk. We run a Bertrand Oligopoly experiment with conversation before and after the pandemic outbreak. The outcome shows that after COVID-19, more participants do not fully engage in the experiment and “cherry-pick” the participation fee. There is a 36.51% decrease in the number of participants who actually participate in conversations and a 31.71% decrease in the number of groups discussing pricing behavior