Antecedents of Solution Quality in Crowdsourcing: The Sponsor's Perspective
Haichao Zheng, Zongxiao Xie, Wenhua Hou, Dahui Li · Journal of electronic commerce research · 2014
ABSTRACTCrowdsourcing has been adopted by firms as a means to access external information, knowledge, and business solutions. How to successfully conduct crowdsourcing is an important question and has drawn significant attention from the research community. The current study developed a research model and tested the model in the case of design contest, using both objective and subjective data collected from a Chinese crowdsourcing platform. We found that both solution quantity and solution diversity had significant effects on solution quality. Further, award had a significant impact on solution quantity but not solution diversity. On the other hand, sponsor-solver interaction significantly increased solution diversity but not solution quantity. Implications are discussed to guide further research and practices in this important area.Keywords: Crowdsourcing; Solution quality; Solution quantity; Solution diversity; Award; Sponsor-solver interaction1. IntroductionRealizing the abundance of experts and knowledge distributed outside firm boundaries, firms have started to adopt open innovation strategies to collaborate with external experts, such as lead users, customers, suppliers, universities, and research institutions [Chesbrough 2003; 2006; Howe 2008; von Hippel 2005; Jeppesen and Frederiksen 2006]. Among these approaches, crowdsourcing via the Internet is an effective method to outsource a firm's business tasks to the global crowd to obtain solutions to the tasks [Ebner et al. 2009; Howe 2008; Hagel and Brown 2009; Yang et al. 2009]. Typically, a firm or sponsor organizes crowdsourcing on its own private platform, such as SAPiens initiated by SAP [Leimeister et al. 2009]. A sponsor can also collaborate with a third party (e.g., Inn°Centive) that organizes crowdsourcing tasks on a public platform for many sponsors. The crowd or solvers are drawn to the platform and provide solutions to the tasks.How to improve solution quality is an important issue in crowdsourcing [e.g., Girotra et al. 2010; Page 2007; Terwiesch and Ulrich 2009]. To leverage the collective intelligence of the crowd and obtain high-quality solutions, the quantity (number of submitted ideas/solutions) and diversity (variance of the solutions) of submitted solutions by the solvers are considered to be two important precursors [Girotra et al. 2010]. Terwiesch and Ulrich [2009] proposed that quantity and diversity had complementary impacts to improve the quality of the best solutions. The prior research has examined the effect of monetary award in crowdsourcing [e.g., Bullinger and Moeslein 2010]. Award is a significant antecedent for reaching a higher number of solutions (quantity) as well as a variety of solutions (diversity). The sponsor can then invest their effort in choosing an ideal solution from these solutions [e.g., Archak and Sundararajan 2009; DiPalantino and Vojnovic 2009].Prior literature has also investigated the role of interactions among solvers, between sponsors and intermediaries, and between solvers and intermediaries in the process of crowdsourcing [Adamczyk et al. 2011; Blohm et al. 2010; Bullinger and Moeslein 2010]. However, little research has examined direct interactions between sponsors and solvers as well as the effects of such interactions on the quantity and diversity of solutions. Consistent with Bullinger et al. [2009], which proposed a systematic view for sponsors and solvers to interact in the innovation contest, we posit that sponsor-solver interaction is an effective way to reach ideal solutions.Such direct interactions eliminate the need for moderation and facilitation of the intermediary or organizer of the platform. The user innovation literature has revealed the importance of co-creation of products and services between a company and its consumers [Algesheimer et al. 2010; Fang et al. 2008; Jeppesen and Frederiksen 2006]. Howe [2008] also suggested that solvers needed directions and guidance from the sponsor or other members who administered the crowdsourcing platform, although these solvers might be capable of self-organizing the crowdsourcing process. …