Research On The Influence Mechanism Of The Solvers' Participation In Crowdsourcing Based On Transaction Cost Theory

Nowadays crowdsourcing has become an important external source of many enterprises' open innovation,also has gradually become a common mode for organizations and individuals to solve problems.The success of crowdsourcing activities is inseparable from the actively participation of solvers.The influence mechanism of the solvers' participation in crowdsourcing activities is the main concern of this paper.At the same time,this study considers that the decision-making of individual solvers in crowdsourcing activities can be abstracted as a transaction decision to measure the cost of participation and the gain of the winning bid.Therefore,with the perspective of the transaction cost theory,the antecedent variables of the willingness of solvers to participate in the crowdsourcing activities will be more clearly explained.First,this study establishes the following research model:(1)The two dimensions of the transaction cost theory have major impacts on the participation will of solvers.Specifically,the transaction uncertainty has a negative impact on the willingness of the individual's participation in the crowdsourcing activities,and the asset specificity has a positive impact on the individual's participation will.(2)The two types of governance mechanisms which are contract governance and relationship governance will adjust the mechanism of the influence from the antecedent variables,especially they can reduce the negative relationship between the uncertainty of transaction and the willingness to participate.Secondly,this study collected 208 solvers' data through questionnaires and conducted multiple regression analysis.Finally,all the hypotheses in this paper were proved.The empirical results show that both the search cost and the execution cost have a significant negative impact on the willingness to participate,while the contract governance mechanism and the trust mechanism can weaken these negative effects,and both the individualized investment and the game investment have significant positive impacts on the willingness to participate.