| As an open innovation model,tournament-based crowdsourcing has been rapidly developed and applied at home and abroad.Existing literature mainly focuses on the participation motivation of solvers and the characteristics of crowdsourcing tasks,and explores various antecedents that affect the participation behavior.However,few studies have revealed the mechanism of the solvers’ behavior,especially the internal mechanism of the participation behavior generated by various task characteristics.Based on the expectancy value theory and planned behavior theory,this paper explores the process mechanism of task characteristics on participation behavior in tournament-based crowdsourcing from the perspectives of participants’ expectations and values.This paper conducts the two-stage online scenario-based experiments to study the influence of task characteristics on the participation behavior of the solver,and aims to study two questions:(1)How does the award size affect the individual’s willingness and participation behavior?(2)Are the effects of award size on participation willingness moderated by the number of awards and the task difficulty?Through two-stage online scenario-based experiment(i.e.,online recruitment and experiment on EPWK platform),this paper finds that:(1)Award size has a significant impact on individual’s willingness,and presents a "U-shape".The establishment of this nonlinear relationship depends on the number of awards and allocation formats.When the task setting distributes the award according to the differential allocations,the award size and the individual’s willingness show an inverted "U-shape".When the number of awards is one,the influence of award size on individual’s willingness shows a positive"U-shape";(2)The number of awards will affect the participants’ willingness by affecting the participants’ expectation of the task,and significantly moderate the influence of award size on the willingness.Participants’ expectations and values have a significant positive effect on the willingness,and participants’ willingness significantly affects their participation behavior.(3)Task difficulty will affect participants’ willingness through the two mediating variables of expectation and value.At the same time,it can moderate the impact of award size on the willingness through value intermediary.This study finds that task characteristics(i.e.,award size,task difficulty)affects participation behavior through the expectation and value mechanisms,and the task difficulty moderates the effect of award size on participation behavior.These findings reveal the expectation and value mechanism between the characteristics of crowdsourcing task and the participation behavior of the solver.It enriches crowdsourcing literature and the applications of expectancy value theory.The findings have a certain reference significance for crowdsourcing platforms and managers.When posting tasks,seekers need to consider how to design the combination of the award size and the number of awards,and achieve the tradeoff between the award size and task difficulty to maximize the individual’s willingness and participation behaviors. |
