Title: Impact of design elements on performance in online innovation contests: contest sequence as a moderator

Authors: Jian Tian; Liwei Wang

Addresses: School of Economics and Management, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, 2 Mengxi Road, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, China ' School of Economics and Management, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, 2 Mengxi Road, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, China

Abstract: As an important issue in the field of innovation contest, performance of innovation contest has been attracting the attention of both academics and practitioners over recent years. This paper explores the factors influencing performance of online innovation contest from the design elements perspective. This empirical research takes insights from the online innovation contest community - studio.Topcoder.com. We find the longer the contest duration, the higher contest performance in the one-stage contest. The results indicate that too much detailed task description will reduce the performance of the one-stage contests but will increase the number of solvers in the two-stage contests. The results also reveal that the incentive effect of first prize in the one-stage contests is stronger than that in the two-stage contests, while the incentive effect of second prize in the two-stage contests is stronger than that in the one-stage contests, and if the amount of second prize is close to the prize amount, the number of solvers and eligible solutions will arise.

Keywords: design elements; contest sequences; performance; online innovation contests; incentive effects; prizes; incentives.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTM.2016.079985

International Journal of Services Technology and Management, 2016 Vol.22 No.6, pp.315 - 330

Published online: 25 Oct 2016 *

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