Effects of Motivation and Rewards on Participation and Performance in Voluntary Online ActivitiesSummaryCompanies increasingly outsource activities to volunteers that they approach via an open call on the internet. The phenomenon is called ‘crowdsourcing’. In general rewards are absent, in some cases the best contributions are rewarded by means of recognition on the website or by monetary prizes. To make effective use of crowdsourcing, it is important to understand what motivates these online volunteers and what is the influence of rewards. Therefore, this thesis examines the relationship between motivation and rewards on the participation and performance of online community members. Through the analysis of three crowdsourcing initiatives, which varied in reward systems, we investigated the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on the decision to contribute and on the quantity, usefulness and novelty of contributions that these online volunteers provide.In the first study (Tweakers.net), financial rewards are absent while reputation rewards are present. It appears that in the absence of rewards, a person’s combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation results in more extreme performance levels than when rewards are present. Persons that have high intrinsic, but low extrinsic, motivation showed the best performance in absence of rewards, while people that combine high intrinsic motivation with high extrinsic motivation performed substantially less, even in a rewarded situation. This led to the conclusion that a crowdsourcing initiative can save money on rewards when addressing people with high intrinsic motivation and low extrinsic motivation. Nevertheless, rewarding still appears effective since this group of people is smaller than the group with both high intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Although the individual performance in the second group is much lower, the group performance appeared to be higher.In the second study (NUfoto.nl), both financial rewards and reputation rewards were offered. This study showed the importance of reward criteria on the effects of motivation on performance. It also highlighted that clearness of reward criteria is more important for reputation rewards than financial rewards.The last study (Green Challenge) can be classified as a research setting in which an extreme money reward is provided. This study, which was explorative in nature, showed that big money prizes attract some very qualified participants, but also a large number of non-serious participants. Filters for quick identification of non-serious participants are developed.This thesis provides a contribution to the scientific literature by first presenting a refined model of the effects of rewards and motivation on voluntary behavior. Especially the combination of high and low levels of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and our conclusion that the absence of rewards has important effects on the behavior of volunteers are major contributions. With this model we are able to explain contrary effects of motivation on performance in empirical studies of online voluntary behavior. Finally, we also provide a possible solution for the controversy between two schools of cognitive psychology that debate the effects of financial rewards on voluntary behavior.Our results also have important implications for organizers of online communities, amongst others, regarding the effective application of reward systems. It also forms the basis of a crowdsourcing classification, in which crowdsourcing initiatives are classified on the basis of their reward systems: Gift sourcing (no or small financial rewards); Expert sourcing (large financial rewards) and Game Sourcing (extreme money rewards). Motivation profiles of optimal performers per crowdsourcing type are identified.
