What Crowdsourcing Platforms Do for Solvers in Problem-Solving Contests: A Content Analysis of Their Websites

Abstract

Solvers’ wide and continuous participation is imperative for the sustainable development of online crowdsourcing platforms (OCPs). Prior studies have deeply investigated what and how solvers’ motives and demographics, task attributes, requester attributes, and platform designs influence solvers’ participation. However, to our knowledge, few studies concentrated on what these OCPs do for solvers in practices that are concerned with solvers and thus influence their decision to participate. To fill this gap, this study conducted a content analysis of 25 typical OCPs focusing on problem-solving contests to identify service measures that they presented for solvers. Consequently, 14 major service measures that are related to contest management, solver management, and requester management were identified. Thereafter, we discussed the roles of these service measures in solvers’ participation. They are activating solvers to participate, providing solvers opportunities to participate, and supporting solvers to participate. Our analysis, on the one hand, presents a comprehensive list of service measures for solvers distributed on these OCPs separately and on the other hand aids the OCPs to improve their solver service and for solvers to compare and analyze their preferred OCPs as a reference.

Keywords

• online crowdsourcing platforms
• problem-solving contests
• service measures
• content analysis
• solvers’ participation