Hiring preferences in domestic cleaning services: evidence from a vignette experiment in the Netherlands

When households want to hire domestic cleaning services, they need to find a suitable domestic worker candidate themselves, usually in the undeclared economy. Given the undeclared nature of domestic work, our knowledge on what households see as desirable traits in potential domestic worker candidates remains limited. Using a vignette experiment, we investigate households' hiring preferences and discern the relative importance that households ascribe to different domestic worker characteristics. Respondents each rated fictive domestic worker candidates who differed in terms of ethnic background, language proficiency, price, quality, reliability and in whether workers are insured against income loss during illness. In total, 2007 vignettes were rated by 503 Dutch respondents. Multilevel regression analysis shows that, except for ethnic background, all vignette dimensions matter, with reliability being most important, followed by price per hour, cleaning quality, language proficiency and insurance against income loss during illness. Additional exploratory analyses further raise questions over whether households are willing to pay a higher price for workers who better meet their preferences. This study examines whether theories on hiring preferences are applicable to a sector in which most employers are private households. In so doing, we shed light on hiring preferences in a large but invisible sector. These findings are valuable to companies that sell domestic cleaning services on the formal market as well as policymakers who aim to formalize work in the sector and to provide better protections to domestic workers.