Cash or Non-Cash? Exploring Ideators' Incentive Preferences in Crowdsourcing Contests

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Riedl, Christoph; Fueller, Johann; Hutter, Katja; Tellis, Gerard J.
• 署名单位: Northeastern University; University of Innsbruck; University of Southern California
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0742-1222
• DOI: 10.1080/07421222.2024.2340828
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 487-514
• 关键词: innovation contests; self-determination; CO-CREATION; performance; reward; PARTICIPATION; tournaments; persistence; COMPETITION; BEHAVIOR

摘要

Even though research has repeatedly shown that non-cash incentives can be effective, cash incentives are the de facto standard in crowdsourcing contests. In this multi-study research, we quantify ideators' preferences for non-cash incentives and investigate how allowing ideators to self-select their preferred incentive-offering ideators a choice between cash and non-cash incentives-affects their creative performance. We further explore whether the market context of the organization hosting the contest-social (non-profit) or monetary (for-profit)-moderates incentive preferences and their effectiveness. We find that individuals exhibit heterogeneous incentive preferences and often prefer non-cash incentives, even in for-profit contexts. Offering ideators a choice of incentives can enhance creative performance. Market context moderates the effect of incentives, such that ideators who receive non-cash incentives in for-profit contexts tend to exert less effort. We show that heterogeneity of ideators' preferences (and the ability to satisfy diverse preferences with suitably diverse incentive options) is a critical boundary condition to realizing benefits from offering ideators a choice of incentives. We provide managers with guidance to design effective incentives by improving incentive-preference fit for ideators.