To Speak up or Shut up? Revealing the Drivers of Crowdworker Voice Behaviors in Crowdsourcing Work Environments

This study examines worker voice behaviors in the microtask crowdsourcing work environment (CSWE) where voice channels are absent. Informed by employee voice research, this study adopts the revealed causal mapping method to analyze the detailed narratives of 60 workers from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Our data analysis shows that the crowdworkers did engage in voice behaviors, but their voices were not always heard, depending on recipients. The crowdworker voice was directed to three different recipients (worker community, job requester, and platform) and influenced by six antecedents (duty orientation, efficacy judgment, workgroup identification, anger/frustration, futility, and achievement orientation). Based on the findings, we propose a model of worker voice antecedents and moderators in the CSWE. This study extends employee voice research by presenting a moderator perspective in the CSWE. Moreover, our study provides a nuanced understanding of crowdworker voice behaviors from two major aspects – antecedent and recipient – contributing to crowdsourcing research

Revealing the Impact of the Crowdsourcing Experience on the Engagement Process

A largely neglected aspect in crowdsourcing research is the “Crowdsourcing Experience”, which every crowdsourcee is necessarily exposed to throughout the IT-mediated crowdsourcing journey, potentially stimulating engagement. In the context of value co-creation participant’s engagement, defined as a psychological state that fosters directly and indirectly related value contributions, is argued to be a holistic measure for crowdsourcing success. Hence, this paper proposes a theoretical framework of the crowdsourcees’ engagement process and a novel approach for assessment. The recommended research design combines case study research with the sequential incident laddering technique to unravel an individual’s Crowdsourcing Experience and its impact on engagement. To the knowledge of the authors, the engagement process was not assessed in the field of crowdsourcing yet and no particular research approach exists. This research in progress offers IS-researchers and practitioners initial insights on IT-enabled engagement processes between individuals and entities to enhance knowledge on mutual value-creation

Get the Crowd Going – An Empirical Analysis toward a Crowdsourcing Engagement Model

Crowdsourcing continues to attract attention from researchers, organizations, and policy makers alike. In particular, crowdsourcing projects that engage intrinsically motivated volunteers and are aimed at endeavors such as policy making, research, and social activism, need to understand how to create sustained engagement in their initiatives. A fair amount of research has been done on identifying users’ motivation in crowdsourcing. However, crowdsourcing motivation literature still lacks sufficient theory-driven approaches. In this paper, we derive from theory of work motivation, the technology acceptance model, and the gamification concept to propose a model that can explain participants’ motivation in crowdsourcing. To measure our model constructs, we conducted a survey on the users of a European crowdsourcing project, researching truck traffic tracking. The results of the exploratory factor analysis confirm that our constructs can be measured properly using our questionnaire. At the end of this paper, we explain our findings and the contribution of our study

Understanding Crowdsourcing Contest Fitness Strategic Decision Factors and Performance: An Expectation-Confirmation Theory Perspective

Contest-based intermediary crowdsourcing represents a powerful new business model for generating ideas or solutions by engaging the crowd through an online competition. Prior research has examined motivating factors such as increased monetary reward or demotivating factors such as project requirement ambiguity. However, problematic issues related to crowd contest fitness have received little attention, particularly with regard to crowd strategic decision-making and contest outcomes that are critical for success of crowdsourcing platforms as well as implementation of crowdsourcing models in organizations. Using Expectation-Confirmation Theory (ECT), we take a different approach that focuses on contest level outcomes by developing a model to explain contest duration and performance. We postulate these contest outcomes are a function of managing crowdsourcing participant contest-fitness expectations and disconfirmation, particularly during the bidding process. Our empirical results show that contest fitness expectations and disconfirmation have an overall positive effect on contest performance. This study contributes to theory by demonstrating the adaptability of ECT literature to the online crowdsourcing domain at the level of the project contest. For practice, important insights regarding strategic decision making and understanding how crowd contest-fitness are observed for enhancing outcomes related to platform viability and successful organizational implementation

Why Incorporating a Platform-Intermediary can Increase Crowdsourcees’ Engagement - Case-Study Based Insights

While the crowdsourcer’s job is to encourage valuable contributions and sustained commitment in a cost- effective manner, it seems as if the primary attention of management and research is still centered on the evaluation of contributions rather than the crowd. As many crowd- sourcers lack the resources to successfully execute such projects, crowdsourcing intermediaries play an increas- ingly important role. First studies dealt with internal management challenges of incorporating an intermediary. However, the issue of how intermediaries influence crowdsourcees’ psychological and behavioral responses, further referred to as engagement, has not been addressed yet. Consequently, two leading research questions guide this paper: (1) How can the engagement process of crowdsourcees be conceptualized? (2) How and why do crowdsourcing intermediaries impact crowdsourcees’ engagement? This study extends existing knowledge by offering IS-researchers a process perspective on engage- ment and exploring the underlying mechanisms and IT- enabled stimuli that foster value-creation in a mediated and non-mediated setting. A theoretical process model is first conceptualized and then explored with insights from two common cases in the growing field of crowd testing. By triangulating platform and interview data, initial proposi- tions concerning the role of specific stimuli and the inter- mediary within the engagement process are derived. It is proposed that crowdsourcing enterprises, incorporating intermediaries, have the potential to generate a desired engagement state when perceived stimuli under their con- trol belong to the so-called group of ‘‘game changers’’ and ‘‘value adders’’, while the intermediary controls mainly ‘‘risk factors’’ for absorbing negative experiences. Apart from the theoretical relevance of studying mediated engagement processes and explaining voluntary use and participation in a socio-technical system, findings support decisions on how to effectively incorporate platform intermediaries

Continued Value Creation in Crowdsourcing from Creative Process Engagement

Purpose Crowdsourcing delivers creative ideas for the issuing firm, but participants’ engagement in the creative process also creates additional benefits to firms and participating customers. To investigate if these spill-over values endure over time, this study uses data from two time points, i.e. at submission and after announcement of the contest winners, to investigate the relationship between the degree of a participant’s creative process engagement (CPE) and value creation from a crowdsourcing contest, and how these perceptions of value change over time. Design/methodology/approach Data was collected from 154 participants in a crowdsourcing contest at two time points with an online survey: at submission, and after receiving feedback (in term of rankings, rewards, and comments) from the community. Partial Least Square (PLS) path modelling was used to estimate both main and moderating effects. Findings CPE increases the perceived value of customers (social and epistemic value) and firms alike (knowledge-sharing intention and customer loyalty), though all but epistemic value decrease over time. Disconfirmation of expectations and need for recognition moderate these effects. Originality/value This paper is the first longitudinal study that helps understanding the effect of CPE on value creation from crowdsourcing across time. It also uses the theoretical lens of the honeymoon hangover effect to explain how perceived value changes. The resulting insights into the role of customer engagement in crowdsourcing contests and subsequent value creation will be beneficial to the growing research stream on consumer value co-creation and user innovation

How Does the Crowdsourcing Experience Impact Participants\u27 Engagement? An Empirical Illustration

A largely neglected aspect in crowdsourcing research is the “Crowdsourcing Experience” itself, which every crowdsourcee is necessarily exposed to throughout the IT-mediated interaction process, potentially stimulating engagement towards the crowdsourcer. Hence, the crowdsourcees’ engagement process is conceptualized and illustrated with empirical findings from a pilot case. It exemplifies that crowdsourcing has the potential to generate high levels of attitudinal and behavioral engagement, depending on prior experiences and perceived cognitions and emotions. Related stimuli characteristics are identified, which serve as a first indication of the foundations of the engagement process. This study offers IS-researchers first insights on the so far under-researched topic of IT-enabled engagement processes between individuals and entities

The Effect of Participation in Production Ideation Crowdsourcing on Affective Commitment as a Driver of Customer Loyalty in the United States Lodging Industry

Crowdsourcing and customer loyalty are two salient issues that offer tremendous opportunities and challenges in the U.S. lodging industry. Crowdsourcing has been empirically demonstrated to deliver substantial benefits at a reduced cost while retaining and enhancing the value of loyal customers has been the elusive “Holy Grail” of lodging companies for at least the past four decades. Moreover, the cost of today’s loyalty programs in the lodging industry is high and growing, while the true loyalty they ostensibly engender is dubious. Extant literature on crowdsourcing and customer loyalty suggests that the two constructs share a number of base theories and several psychological and other antecedents. The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether lodging companies might be able to leverage these shared theories and antecedents to reap the benefits generated by crowdsourcing the ideation of new products and services while simultaneously enhancing customer loyalty in the process. After analysis, the results show that shared psychological antecedents of self-esteem, social identity, and perceived knowledge, together with other incentives, significantly and positively affect customers’ willingness to participate in product ideation crowdsourcing, which in turn positively affects affective commitment as a mediating driver of customer loyalty. The analysis further shows that the effect that participation in product crowdsourcing has on affective commitment is moderated by the customers’ employment status, such that being a managerial level employee will amplify the positive effect on affective commitment while being a non-managerial employee will diminish that amplification. The study results contribute to the existing theory and literature related to both crowdsourcing and customer loyalty, while the practical application of these results can have a prodigious impact on the lodging industry. Companies should be able to invite their customers to help them cost-effectively develop better products and services with the reasonable expectation that these participants will become even more loyal to the company. Moreover, this loyalty is psychological in nature, and as such is both lower cost and harder to break. Crowdsourced products have been empirically demonstrated to often not only be superior to those developed in-house but also to command a sales and marketing premium by merely letting consumers know that the product or service had, in fact, been the product of people like them

Privacy in crowdsourcing:a systematic review

The advent of crowdsourcing has brought with it multiple privacy challenges. For example, essential monitoring activities, while necessary and unavoidable, also potentially compromise contributor privacy. We conducted an extensive literature review of the research related to the privacy aspects of crowdsourcing. Our investigation revealed interesting gender differences and also differences in terms of individual perceptions. We conclude by suggesting a number of future research directions.</p