Momentum effects in crowdsourcing contest platforms

Abstract

Members of a crowdsourcing contest platform usually participate in multiple contests over time. Their performance in these contests can create a performance trajectory, producing positive or negative momentum. Although such momentum is a pervasive phenomenon in practice, it has largely been overlooked in the crowdsourcing contest literature. The broader literature on momentum posits that it can affect individuals’ cognition and change their behavior. We leverage insights from this literature to investigate how momentum influences contestants’ performance and the underlying mechanisms. We show that contestants’ momentum is positively associated with their contest performance by motivating contestants to engage in more learning activities (including learning from others and learning from own experience) between contests and exert more effort during contests. By adopting momentum theory as a novel theoretical lens, our study enriches the crowdsourcing contest literature by showing that momentum is a novel and impactful determinant of individuals’ contestant performance. Besides, whereas classical momentum theory asserts that motivation explains the positive relationship between momentum and performance, we extend the boundary of momentum theory by showing that contestants’ motivation manifests in their learning activities and effort in the context of crowdsourcing contest platforms. Taken together, our study offers important practical implications for the design and governance of crowdsourcing contest platforms.