Let the ideas flow: Antecedents of engagement in community-based crowdsourcing

Community-based crowdsourcing offers a unique opportunity for citizens who want to serve the community without the hassle of traveling or attending meetings. In community-based crowdsourcing, problem owners seek possible solutions for a communal issue from the whole community in the form of an open call. Individuals in the community respond to this call with ideas and suggestions to address the issue. As community-based crowdsourcing portals seek to supplant physical town halls, the necessity of facilitating crowdsourcing interactions to keep participants continuously engaged is becoming more salient. This study explored various antecedents that may influence the levels of user engagement when they are contributing to community-based crowdsourcing websites. Specifically, this study explored the effect of personal interest in topic, goal clarity, positive feedback, and self-efficacy on user engagement in community-based crowdsourcing websites. The results of the study found that personal interest in the task plays a strong role in determining the motivation of the user in the task as well as their levels of engagement. In addition it was found that motivation to contribute mediated the relationship between personal interest and engagement. Furthermore, the results showed that knowledge self-efficacy of the crowdsourcing users played a significant role in determining the motivation towards the task and engagement of the users. Motivation to contribute was also found to mediate the relationship between knowledge self-efficacy and engagement. The feedback manipulation technique that was created for the crowdsourcing participants was successful. However, no support could be found for the moderating effects of feedback on the relationship between personal interest and motivation to contribute. This lack of effect maybe contributed to the absence of direct and dynamic feedback to the users contributions during the crowdsourcing exercise. The goal clarity manipulation failed to be successful and so it was not possible to draw any conclusions from the results of the experiment.