Improving the effectiveness of social media-based crowdsourcing innovations: roles of assurance mechanism and innovator's behaviour
Industrial Management & Data Systems
ISSN: 0263-5577
Article publication date: 29 October 2020
Issue publication date: 2 February 2021
Abstract
Purpose
With the development of social media and Internet technology, many firms have started to use various crowdsourcing innovation platforms to operate their open innovation business modes. The purpose of this study is to explore how such platforms' assurance mechanisms enhance the effectiveness of crowdsourcing innovations and how to apply assurance mechanisms to handle different innovation tasks, thereby motivating more seekers to use crowdsourcing innovations.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use a Python-based technology to collect the research data comprising 2,302 solvers and 8,390 trade records from zbj.com and apply statistical methods to test the postulated hypotheses.
Findings
The effectiveness of assurance mechanism is confirmed by its positive relationship with solver's behaviour, thereby improving seeker's retention behaviour. However, task complexity, task novelty and task professionalization have different moderating effects on the relationships among assurance mechanism, solver's (innovator's) behaviour and seeker's behaviour.
Research limitations/implications
This study enriches the literature on crowdsourcing innovations and extends the application of uncertainty reduction theory to innovation research. It also makes the theoretical contribution that the assurance mechanism adopted by the platform has different impacts on user's behaviour depending on the task characteristics.
Practical implications
The findings provide guidance to the platform operator on how to design the assurance mechanism to match the innovation task and innovator's behaviour to reduce seeker's uncertainty, thereby facilitating the seeker's decision-making.
Originality/value
A particular value of this study lies in exploring the impact of the platform assurance mechanism of social media-based crowdsourcing innovations on innovator's behaviour, which may further improve seeker's behaviour, based on uncertainty reduction theory.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. This paper is partially supported by Beijing Social Science Foundation of China (grant number: 18GLC081), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant number: 2020JBW002), the National Science Foundation of China (grant number: 71971215, 71601187), and “the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities” in Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (2722020JCT019).
Citation
Yang, Y., Dong, C., Yao, X., Lee, P.K.C. and Cheng, T.C.E. (2021), "Improving the effectiveness of social media-based crowdsourcing innovations: roles of assurance mechanism and innovator's behaviour", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 121 No. 2, pp. 478-497. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-05-2020-0286
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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