Motivating participation and improving quality of contribution in ubiquitous crowdsourcing

Abstract

Ubiquitous crowdsourcing, or the crowdsourcing of tasks in settings beyond the desktop, is attracting interest due to the increasing maturity of mobile and ubiquitous technology, such as smartphones and public displays. In this paper we attempt to address a fundamental challenge in ubiquitous crowdsourcing: if people can contribute to crowdsourcing anytime and anyplace, why would they choose to do so? We highlight the role of motivation in ubiquitous crowdsourcing, and its effect on participation and performance. Through a series of field studies we empirically validate various motivational approaches in the context of ubiquitous crowdsourcing, and assess the comparable advantages of ubiquitous technologies' affordances. We show that through motivation ubiquitous crowdsourcing becomes comparable to online crowdsourcing in terms of participation and task performance, and that through motivation we can elicit better quality contributions and increased participation from workers. We also show that ubiquitous technologies' contextual capabilities can increase participation through increasing workers' intrinsic motivation, and that the in-situ nature of ubiquitous technologies can increase both participation and engagement of workers. Combined, our findings provide empirically validated recommendations on the design and implementation of ubiquitous crowdsourcing.