Sabotage in crowdsourcing

Organizations increasingly apply crowdsourcing contests for problem-solving and ideation. However, contest organizers often face various challenges when holding a contest. One major problem of contests is unproductive and destructive strategic behavior, like self-promotion and sabotage. Such forms of strategic behavior are problematic for various reasons: First, from a societal or contest organizer’s perspective, sabotage is worrying because it destroys output and is welfare damaging. Second, participants reduce productive efforts if they are expecting a lot of sabotage within a contest and therefore the maximal possible output is further reduced. The planned research project aims at experimentally testing the effects of sabotage in crowdsourcing and possible countermeasures. Additionally, the results are likely to have implications for crowd-based review websites like Yelp or Tripadvisor.