Exploring the trends, characteristic antecedents, and performance consequences of crowdsourcing project risks

This research develops the risk dimensions of crowdsourcing projects and investigates the trends in risk dimensions and performance across crowdsourcing projects with high, medium, and low risk levels. This study also verifies the influence of critical crowdsourcing project characteristics, such as project mode, project purpose, project type, and number of participants, on crowdsourcing project risks. On the basis of the quantitative data collected from 403 crowdsourcees and crowdsourcers through an online survey in China, results of cluster and multivariate analyses of variance indicate that the mean level of each risk dimension consistently moves with the change in cluster risk levels. Technical-related risks are more critical than social-related ones in crowdsourcing projects. Task risk is the most significant risk dimension. All risk dimensions (i.e., crowdsourcer, relationship, crowdsourcee, complexity, requirement, and task) are negatively associated with crowdsourcing project performance. Each risk dimension is considerably influenced by various characteristics of crowdsourcing projects.