Designing a community crowdsourcing system with a motivation-based gamification

Abstract

Crowdsourcing is used in various fields as a powerful means for solving problems by gathering a wide range of inputs. There are four types of crowdsourcing, depending on the characteristics of the task (i.e., crowd-processing, -rating, -solving, and -creating). Because the many problems to be solved involve various complex fields that affect society, politics, and the environment, the importance of crowdcreating has increased in recent years. Crowdcreating refers to a crowdsourcing activity that aims to collect new ideas or to create datasets. To increase the motivation of participants involved in crowdsourcing, gamification has become popular. However, gamification studies related to crowdcreating systems have not been actively conducted. Most gamification studies have studied general game mechanics used to earn points, badges, and leaderboard positions instead of focusing on task understanding, worker requirements, and game objectives. Therefore, in this study, we examine the applicability of gamification based on the experiences of workers performing tasks in a crowdcreating system. We also examine gamification design by considering task characteristics and resultant worker motivation. The necessity of gamification for the creating system is shown to be lower than that of other types of crowdsourcing. Social contributions, human-capital advancements, and community identification were confirmed as important motivators affecting worker engagement and participation. We therefore suggest the concept of motivation-based gamification, which hinges on these three motivators to improve task performance. We verify the effect of the proposed motivation-based gamification method using a controlled field study with different gamification designs (i.e., none, basic, and motivational). In an experiment, participants submit ideas and opinions about issues in campus for creating tasks, and three gamification designs are applied. The results show that interest in the issue-at-hand has the greatest influence on engagement and participation. Changes in engagement level according to interest is modulated by gamification design, and the level of participation varies according to design. Results show that the engagement and participation of workers in the creating system differ depending on which gamification design is used. From this, we suggest a list of key considerations for gamification design for crowdcreating systems to increase engagement and participation.