𝔖 Bobbio Scriptorium
✦   LIBER   ✦

Crowdsourcing with all-pay auctions: A field experiment on Taskcn

✍ Scribed by Tracy Xiao Liu; Jiang Yang; Lada A. Adamic; Yan Chen


Publisher
Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
Year
2011
Tongue
English
Weight
181 KB
Volume
48
Category
Article
ISSN
0044-7870

No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.

✦ Synopsis


We investigate the effects of various design features of allpay auction crowdsourcing sites by conducting a field experiment on Taskcn, one of the largest crowdsourcing sites in China where all-pay auction mechanisms are used. Specifically, we study the effects of price, reserve price in the form of the early entry of high-quality answers (shill answers), and reputation systems on answer quantity and quality by posting translation and programming tasks on Taskcn. We find significant price effects on both the number of submissions and answer quality, and that tasks with shill answers have pronounced lower answer quality, which are consistent with our theoretical predictions. In addition, monetary incentives and the existence of shill answers have different effects on users with differing experience and expertise levels.