Monetary rewards have become widely used to compensate user engagement in innovation contests. Building on literature on social judgement of organisations, we provide evidence on another important effect of monetary rewards in innovation contests, namely a signalling effect that may either enhance or lower a contest host’s legitimacy and subsequently users’ willingness to participate in the contest. Along three studies, we show that the signalling effect is especially beneficial for the innovation contest purposes that are incongruent with the host’s organisational stereotype, i.e., in cases where she lacks specific organisational traits that constitute users’ perception of organisational legitimacy. Offering a higher monetary reward in such a scenario allows hosts to overcome a lack of legitimacy and consequently foster user participation.

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为合法性买单？创新竞赛中金钱奖励的信号效应

货币奖励已被广泛用于补偿用户参与创新竞赛。基于有关组织的社会判断的文献，我们提供了金钱奖励在创新竞赛中的另一个重要影响的证据，即可能增强或降低竞赛主办方的合法性以及随后用户参与竞赛的意愿的信号效应。在三项研究中，我们表明信号效应对于与主办方的组织刻板印象不一致的创新竞赛目的特别有益，即在她缺乏构成用户对组织合法性感知的特定组织特征的情况下。在这种情况下提供更高的金钱奖励可以让主机克服缺乏合法性的问题，从而促进用户参与。