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

Abstract

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 contestfitness 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.

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