Competing or aiming to be average?: Normification as a means of engaging digital volunteers

Engagement, motivation and active contribution by digital volunteers are key requirements for crowdsourcing and citizen science projects. Many systems use competitive elements, for example point scoring and leaderboards, to achieve these ends. However, while competition may motivate some people, it can have a neutral or demotivating effect on others. In this paper we explore theories of personal and social norms and investigate normification as an alternative approach to engagement, to be used alongside or instead of competitive strategies. We provide a systematic review of existing crowdsourcing and citizen science literature and categorise the ways that theories of norms have been incorporated to date. We then present qualitative interview data from a pro-environmental crowdsourcing study, Close the Door, which reveals normalising attitudes in certain participants. We assess how this links with competitive behaviour and participant performance. Based on our findings and analysis of norm theories, we consider the implications for designers wishing to use normification as an engagement strategy in crowdsourcing and citizen science systems

Mechanism design for spatio-temporal request satisfaction in mobile networks

Mobile agents participating in geo-presence-capable crowdsourcing applications should be presumed rational, competitive, and willing to deviate from their routes if given the right incentive. In this paper, we design a mechanism that takes into consideration this rationality for request satisfaction in such applications. We propose the Geo-temporal Request Satisfaction (GRS) problem to be that of finding the optimal assignment of requests with specific spatio-temporal characteristics to competitive mobile agents subject to spatio-temporal constraints. The objective of the GRS problem is to maximize the total profit of the system subject to our rationality assumptions. We define the problem formally, prove that it is NP-Complete, and present a practical solution mechanism, which we prove to be convergent, and which we evaluate experimentally.National Science Foundation (1012798, 0952145, 0820138, 0720604, 0735974

New quality of financial institutions and business management

Economic processes in the world are characterized by a high level of dynamism, change and innovative approaches to addressing key issues in nowadays. In a context of globalization and European integration of Ukraine into a high-tech competitive environment in order to financing innovative projects, it is necessary to use Blockchain technology as an effective tool for digital economy. Purpose of scientific research is to find out key priorities and functionalities of Blockchain’s application for solving business and government tasks. The object of scientific research is the latest financial technology Blockchain and a system of cult-technologies: crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, crowdinvesting. Methodology. In the process of re-search, the following methods are used: generalization – in studying the nature, pre-conditions and principles of Blockchain technologies; formalization – when compar-ing characteristics of the latest forms of financing, such as crowdsourcing, crowd-funding, crowdinvesting. In the course of scientific research, key qualitative charac-teristics of digital economy are described and the dominant components of its devel-opment are investigated. The result of the article. The priorities, new principles of business management and possibilities of Blockchain technology as an effective digi-tal economy tool for solving business and government tasks are revealed. Future pro-spects from the implementation of crowd-technologies as an effective management tool in progress for solving the problems of innovative business are substantiated. Interconnection in the latest financial institution of creative initiatives realization is presented. The comparative analysis of management of new institutes of innovative development for Ukrainian economy in the course of doing business is carried out. The result of the research is presentation of the relationship in the latest financial in-stitution implementing creative initiatives and a comparative analysis of new insti-tutes of innovative development in the sphere of finance for the Ukrainian economy. Practical implications. The components of digital economy identified by the authors in the article are accelerators of the socio-economic life of Ukrainian society in the modern world and are capable of rapidly increasing Ukraine’s GDP. The described new forms of financing of Ukrainian start-ups (crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing) are today quite interesting and effective tool for solving business problems in the financial, economic, innovative, marketing and marketing spheres. Value/originality. Blockchain technology, as an effective tool for Ukraine’s digital economy, is able to address the challenges of business and government, uncover the relationship between crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, and explain the content of innovative financial institutions for Ukraine’s economy

Rational coordination of crowdsourced resources for geo-temporal request satisfaction

Existing mobile devices roaming around the mobility field should be considered as useful resources in geo-temporal request satisfaction. We refer to the capability of an application to access a physical device at particular geographical locations and times as GeoPresence, and we pre- sume that mobile agents participating in GeoPresence-capable applica- tions should be rational, competitive, and willing to deviate from their routes if given the right incentive. In this paper, we define the Hitch- hiking problem, which is that of finding the optimal assignment of re- quests with specific spatio-temporal characteristics to competitive mobile agents subject to spatio-temporal constraints. We design a mechanism that takes into consideration the rationality of the agents for request sat- isfaction, with an objective to maximize the total profit of the system. We analytically prove the mechanism to be convergent with a profit com- parable to that of a 1/2-approximation greedy algorithm, and evaluate its consideration of rationality experimentally.Supported in part by NSF Grants; #1430145, #1414119, #1347522, #1239021, and #1012798