Exploring social influence in crowdsourcing

• Author(s): Martins, Rui Gonçalves Garrido de Lima
• Date: 2012
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/14832
• Origin: Veritati - Repositório Institucional da Universidade Católica Portuguesa
• Document Type: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Advisor(s): Villarroel Fernández, Juan Andrei

Description

This study addresses the phenomenon of social influence in crowdsourcing platforms and, inparticular, it sought to explore whether depending on personal, contextual or cultural, characteristics, individuals which participate in such endeavors are more or less prone to become influenced by a majority when performing an objective task. In crowdsourcing platforms individuals participate through different decision making mechanisms such as voting, averaging and consensus. The exposure to informational cues regarding the aggregate output of a crowd is hypothesized to constitute a pressure upon the individuals' behavior. Our findings provide evidence about the existence of and proneness to socialinfluence in crowdsourcing platforms. These research also showsthat skill level and homophilousties among participants are a stronghold against the pressures of the majorities. These results empirically demonstrate that in the presence of an informational cues a large amount of individuals accept majorities' outcomes as an evidence of the reality. Through the current findings, we provide insighton the phenomenon of social influence in crowdsourcing platforms and, by unveiling these results, give a contribution towards managing such platforms.