PhD Public Defense, Shakir Karim Buksh
Title: The Impact of Capability and Motivation on Performance of Crowd Workers in Crowdsourcing
PhD Public Defense: Shakir Karim Buksh, a PhD scholar in the Department of Computer Science
Advisor: Dr. Zaheeruddin Asif
External Examiners:
Dr. Noman Islam (Professor of Computer Science at Iqra University)
and Dr. Syed Imran Jami
Professor ( Academic Dean ), Faculty of Computing, Department of Computer Science, Mohammad Ali Jinnah University
Date: February 22, 2025, at 10:00 AM
Venue:Tabba Conference Room, Tabba Academic Block, Second Floor, Main Campus, IBA Karachi
Abstract
Crowdsourcing has evolved to become an important business model since its inception. It is a cost effective and time efficient process which facilitates large groups of people to contribute their knowledge, expertise, time or resources towards completing a task via the Internet. Despite of cost effectiveness and time efficiency, the quality of tasks submitted by crowd workers is a key concern. Previous research informs that quality of work is often affected by poor employee performance. Traditionally the employees are selected from a pool of applicants based on their capability to perform better where their performance is measured depending upon the ability and effort they applied to a particular task. Theories regarding job performance suggest different motivational factors for such effort expenditure. Motivation drives effort which may or may not lead to a good performance as perceived by an individual.
Given the temporary nature of the association and the limited background information available about the crowd workers in crowdsourcing domain, it is plausible to believe that studying the capability and motivation of the crowd workers can result in better performance and hence the improved quality. Though previous research has shed considerable light on the landscape of crowdsourcing with respect to the motivation of crowd workers, and investigated why do they participate and what are the ways they should be rewarded, the quality of crowdsourced task is still a concern, and more research is needed. In order to determine the effectiveness of the relationship of capability and motivation with performance, it is necessary to explore the contributing elements of both the constructs since it is unclear how to define / assess a capable and motivated crowd worker. This requires not only to quantifying the constructs but also warrants how capability and motivation interactively affect the performance of crowd worker.
This research aims to thoroughly investigate how capability and motivation affect performance of crowd worker. It also specifically explores which elements of motivation affect the performance of crowd worker the most and how to compute capability and motivation of a crowd worker? The research further examines combined effect of capability and motivation on performance including the mediation effect of capability on motivation-performance relation and the mediation effect of motivation on capability-performance relation. Additionally, the nature of the combined effect is also investigated, that is, whether the combined effect of motivation and capability on performance is multiplicative or additive?
To achieve the objectives, the research is conducted in two parts. In first part of study, survey was conducted to validate the model using structural equation modeling. The second part of the study was based on experiment. The experiment was conducted on crowd workers to measure and analyze the relationship of capability and motivation with performance. Analysis of the survey using SEM suggests that expectancy, extrinsic instrumentality and intrinsic valence have a significant positive effect on the motivation of crowd worker. Capacity, matching, and opportunity have a significant positive effect on capability of crowd worker. Capability and motivation have positive effect on crowd worker's performance. Testing for mediation effect using Sobel test reveals that motivation partially mediates significantly (p< .05) the relationship of capability and performance. Capability partially mediates (p< .1) the relationship of motivation and performance. Finding of the experimental study informs that the capability and motivation of a crowd worker have combined effect on performance. This combined effect is multiplicative rather than additive.
To the best of our knowledge, this research is the first attempt to investigate and validate the combined effect of capability and motivation of crowd workers on their performance. It is also the first attempt to formulate the capability construct for crowd worker.
This research provides the insights for practitioners associated with the domain of crowdsourcing in designing micro-tasks where monetary compensation might not be significant. It will not only assist in identifying the capable individual but also give an understanding of the degree of her motivation, both of which will unquestionably have an impact on the overall quality of the submission.