Why Is Your Crowd Abandoning You? : Exploring Crowdsourcing Discontinuance through the Lens of Motivation Theory

Abstract

A typical crowdsourcing platform connects organisations in need for workforce to individuals willing to work for a compensation. Considering that a motivated crowd constitutes a vital resource of such platforms, nurturing it becomes a crucial managerial consideration. Yet, little is known of why individual workers abandon crowdsourcing platforms after long periods of usage. Therefore, we set out to explore how crowd-workers’ motivations change during a platform’s usage lifecycle, from initial usage, to continued use, to its eventual abandonment. To this end, we conducted an in-depth qualitative inquiry into a popular crowdsourcing platform in the software-testing domain. Leveraging self-determination theory and IS use lifecycle as sensitising devices, we interviewed crowd-workers who had adopted, used, and eventually abandoned the platform. As a result, we propose a stage model in which individuals’ extrinsic and intrinsic motivations emerge and interact over time, resulting in discontinued use. We provide implications to both theory and practice.