While the crowdsourcer’s job is to encourage valuable contributions and sustained commitment in a cost-effective manner, it seems as if the primary attention of management and research is still centered on the evaluation of contributions rather than the crowd. As many crowdsourcers lack the resources to successfully execute such projects, crowdsourcing intermediaries play an increasingly important role. First studies dealt with internal management challenges of incorporating an intermediary. However, the issue of how intermediaries influence crowdsourcees’ psychological and behavioral responses, further referred to as engagement, has not been addressed yet. Consequently, two leading research questions guide this paper: (1) How can the engagement process of crowdsourcees be conceptualized? (2) How and why do crowdsourcing intermediaries impact crowdsourcees’ engagement? This study extends existing knowledge by offering IS-researchers a process perspective on engagement and exploring the underlying mechanisms and IT-enabled stimuli that foster value-creation in a mediated and non-mediated setting. A theoretical process model is first conceptualized and then explored with insights from two common cases in the growing field of crowd testing. By triangulating platform and interview data, initial propositions concerning the role of specific stimuli and the intermediary within the engagement process are derived. It is proposed that crowdsourcing enterprises, incorporating intermediaries, have the potential to generate a desired engagement state when perceived stimuli under their control belong to the so-called group of “game changers” and “value adders”, while the intermediary controls mainly “risk factors” for absorbing negative experiences. Apart from the theoretical relevance of studying mediated engagement processes and explaining voluntary use and participation in a socio-technical system, findings support decisions on how to effectively incorporate platform intermediaries.

中文翻译：

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为什么合并平台中介可以增加众包的参与度

虽然众包者的工作是以具有成本效益的方式鼓励有价值的贡献和持续的承诺，但似乎管理和研究的主要注意力仍然集中在对贡献的评估而不是人群上。由于许多众包商缺乏成功执行此类项目的资源，众包中介发挥着越来越重要的作用。最初的研究涉及合并中介的内部管理挑战。然而，中介如何影响众包的心理和行为反应（进一步称为参与）的问题尚未得到解决。因此，有两个主要的研究问题指导本文：(1) 如何将众包的参与过程概念化？(2) 众包中介如何以及为何影响众包参与？本研究通过为 IS 研究人员提供参与的过程视角并探索在中介和非中介环境中促进价值创造的潜在机制和 IT 支持的刺激来扩展现有知识。首先对理论过程模型进行概念化，然后根据不断增长的人群测试领域中的两个常见案例的见解进行探索。通过对平台和访谈数据进行三角测量，可以得出关于特定刺激和中介在参与过程中的作用的初步命题。建议众包企业，结合中介机构，当他们控制的感知刺激属于所谓的“游戏改变者”和“增值者”群体时，他们有可能产生期望的参与状态，而中介主要控制吸收负面体验的“风险因素”。除了研究中介参与过程和解释社会技术系统中的自愿使用和参与的理论相关性外，研究结果还支持关于如何有效整合平台中介的决策。