How intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives affect task effort in crowdsourcing contests: A mediated moderation model

This study develops a mediated moderation model to explain how extrinsic incentives and intrinsic motivation interactively affect task effort of solvers in crowdsourcing contests, and whether engagement mediates their interactive effect. The hypotheses are empirically tested by analyzing data collected from 290 solvers on a Chinese crowdsourcing contest platform. A negative moderation effect between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives is found, showing that intrinsic motivation's effect on task effort weakens when the level of extrinsic incentives is high. More interesting, we find that this moderation effect is fully mediated by engagement, which in turn directly increases task effort. In addition, extrinsic incentives are found to positively moderate the relationship between engagement and task effort. These findings shed light on the complex mechanisms underlying solver motivation and engagement in crowdsourcing contests, and provide implications for theory and practice of crowdsourcing management.