Abstract
With the growth of web 2.0 technology, crowdsourcing contests now offer task-seekers an opportunity to access expertise and resources at a lower cost. Many studies have investigated the effects of influencing factors on solvers’ participation behaviors. However, there has been scant research on the effect of competition intensity and on the relationships between competition and reward. We collect data from the Taskcn website in China to build a two-equation model based on expectation-value theory to explore the effects of task reward and competition intensity on solvers’ registration and submission behaviors. The research results verify that task reward is positively associated with the number of registrations and submissions, and competition intensity is negatively associated with solvers’ submissions. In addition, the empirical results show that competition intensity moderates the relationship between task reward and submissions. These findings provide valuable contributions to the literature on crowdsourcing contests.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ajzen, I. (1987). Attitudes, traits, and actions: Dispositional prediction of behavior in personality and social psychology. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 20(1), 1–63.
Archak, N., & Sundararajan, A. (2009). Optimal design of crowdsourcing contests. ICIS 2009 Proceedings.
Atkinson, J. W. (1957). Motivational determinants of risk-taking behavior. Psychological Review, 64(61), 359–372.
Boudreau, K. J., & Lakhani, K. R. (2013). Using the crowd as an innovation partner. Harvard Business Review, 91(4), 60–69.
Boudreau, K. J., Lacetera, N., & Lakhani, K. R. (2011). Incentives and problem uncertainty in innovation contests: An empirical analysis. Management Science, 57(5), 843–863.
Brabham, D. C. (2008a). Crowdsourcing as a model for problem solving an introduction and cases. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 14(1), 75–90.
Brabham, D. C. (2008b). Moving the crowd at iStockphoto: The composition of the crowd and motivations for participation in a crowdsourcing application. First Monday, 13(6), 1–22.
Brabham, D. C. (2010). Moving the crowd at Threadless: Motivations for participation in a crowdsourcing application. Information, Communication & Society, 13(8), 1122–1145.
Chen, Y., Ho, T.-H., & Kim, Y.-M. (2010). Knowledge market design: A field experiment at Google answers. Journal of Public Economic Theory, 12(4), 641–664.
Chiu, C.-M., & Wang, E. (2008). Understanding web-based learning continuance intention: The role of subjective task value. Information & Management, 45, 194–201.
Chiu, C.-M., Hsu, M.-H., & Wang, E. T. (2006). Understanding knowledge sharing in virtual communities: An integration of social capital and social cognitive theories. Decision Support Systems, 42(3), 1872–1888.
Cronbach, L. J., & Snow, R. E. (1977). Aptitudes and instructional methods: A handbook for research on interactions. New York: Irvington.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268.
DiPalantino, D., & Vojnovic, M. (2009). Crowdsourcing and all-pay auctions. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on Electronic commerce, 119–128.
Horton, J. J., & Chilton, L. B. (2010). The labor economics of paid crowdsourcing. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 11th ACM conference on Electronic commerce. ACM, 209–218
Kaufmann, N., Schulze, T., & Veit, D. (2011). More than fun and money. Worker Motivation in Crowdsourcing-A Study on Mechanical Turk. Paper presented at the AMCIS.
Leimeister, J. M., Huber, M., Bretschneider, U., & Krcmar, H. (2009). Leveraging crowdsourcing: Activation-supporting components for IT-based ideas competition. Journal of Management Information Systems, 26(1), 197–224.
Liu, T. X., Yang, J., Adamic, L. A., & Chen, Y. (2014). Crowdsourcing with all-pay auctions: A field experiment on taskcn. Management Science, 60(8), 2020–2037.
Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in personality: A clinical and experimental study of fifty men of college age. New York: Oxford University Press.
Nagengast, B., Marsh, H. W., Scalas, L. F., Xu, M. K., Hau, K.-T., & Trautwein, U. (2011). Who took the “×” out of expectancy-value theory? A psychological mystery, a substantive-methodological synergy, and a cross-national generalization. Psychological Science, 22(8), 1058–1066.
Poetz, M. K., & Schreier, M. (2012). The value of crowdsourcing: Can users really compete with professionals in generating new product ideas? Journal of Product Innovation Management, 29(2), 245–256.
Shah, J., & Higgins, E. T. (1997). Expectancy× value effects: Regulatory focus as determinant of magnitude and direction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(3), 447–458.
Sun, Y., Fang, Y., & Lim, K. H. (2012). Understanding sustained participation in transactional virtual communities. Decision Support Systems, 53(1), 12–22.
Terwiesch, C., & Xu, Y. (2008). Innovation contests, open innovation, and multiagent problem solving. Management Science, 54(9), 1529–1543.
Vroom, V. H. (1964). Work and motivation. 1964. NY: John Wiley &sons, 47–51.
Wigfield, A., & Eccles, J. (2000). Expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 68–81.
Wigfield, A., Tonks, S., & Klauda, S. L. (2009). Expectancy-value theory. Handbook of Motivation at School, 55–75.
Wu, C.-G., Gerlach, J., & Young, C. (2007). An empirical analysis of open source software developers' motivations and continuance intentions. Information & Management, 44(3), 253–262.
Yang, J., Adamic, L. A., & Ackerman, M. S. (2008a). Competing to share expertise: The taskcn knowledge sharing community. Paper presented at the ICWSM, 161–169.
Yang, J., Adamic, L.A., & Ackerman, M.S. (2008b). Crowdsourcing and knowledge sharing: strategic user behavior on taskcn. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 9th ACM conference on Electronic commerce, 246–255
Yang, Y., Chen, P.-Y., & Pavlou, P. (2009). Open innovation: An empirical study of online contests. Paper presented at ICIS, 1–16.
Zhao, Y., & Zhu, Q. (2014). Evaluation on crowdsourcing research: Current status and future direction. Information Systems Frontiers, 16(3), 417–434.
Zheng, H., Li, D., & Hou, W. (2011). Task design, motivation, and participation in crowdsourcing contests. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 15(4), 57–88.
Acknowledgements
The authors highly appreciate the Senior Editor Doug Vogel and Judith Gebauer and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. All errors remain ours.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Responsible Editors: Doug Vogel and Judith Gebauer
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Li, D., Hu, L. Exploring the effects of reward and competition intensity on participation in crowdsourcing contests. Electron Markets 27, 199–210 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-017-0252-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-017-0252-7