Crowdsourcing contests with entry cost

DOI number:

10.1111/itor.12883

Journal:

International Transactions in Operational Research

Abstract:

Today, companies can seek solutions to business problems by sponsoring cocreation activities such as crowdsourcing contests. This paper studies a crowdsourcing contest in which a sponsor seeks solutions from a number of independent contestants. Specifically, we reveal how the number of contestants affects the expected effort and maximum quality in a crowdsourcing contest. First, we show that an effort-decreasing effect exists for any number of winners when there are a number of contestants, while an effort-increasing effect may occur when there are relatively few contestants. Second, we find that the expected maximum quality at most concavely increases with the number of contestants. Finally, we extend the analysis to the case with a flexible number of contributors. Our results imply that a restricted-entry policy should be adopted if the entry cost is considered, which is not observed in the prior literature.

Co-author:

Gongbing Bi,Xiaobei Shen,Lindong Liu*

First Author:

Xu Tian

Document Code:

[9]

Volume:

28

Issue:

3

Page Number:

1371-1392

Translation or Not:

no

Date of Publication:

2021/05/12