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Factors affecting participation of solvers in crowdsourcing: an empirical study from China

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Abstract

Crowdsourcing comprises a variety of creative contests, and its success is closely related to the quantity and quality of solvers. The research model of factors influencing the quantity and quality of solvers with respect to contest arrangement attributes and market competition situation has been developed in this paper, and the model has been tested with data from a crowdsourcing website in China. The results show that higher awards, easier tasks, longer duration and lower competition intensity lead to a higher number of solvers. Higher awards, longer duration and higher difficulty level of tasks lead to higher ability level of winners, but competition intensity and market price for other competing projects do not show significant correlation with the ability level of winners.

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Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 09CTQ023), Natural Science Foundation Project of CQ CSTC (No.2008BB2042), and Science and Technology Innovation Fund for individual Graduate Students of Chongqing University (CDJXS11020023).

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Correspondence to Bo Xu.

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Responsible editor: Xin Luo

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Shao, B., Shi, L., Xu, B. et al. Factors affecting participation of solvers in crowdsourcing: an empirical study from China. Electron Markets 22, 73–82 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-012-0093-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-012-0093-3

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