Professor Chen Jianqing, Naveen Jindal School of Business, University of Texas, Dallas, was invited to give an academic report

Contributed by, Photographer: Department of Management Engineering

At the invitation of the School of Management and Economics, Professor Chen Jianqing of the Naveen Jindal School of Business at the University of Texas at Dallas made an academic report entitled "Sponsored Tasks and Solver Participation in Crowdsourcing Questions" online at 10 a.m. on December 28, 2022. The seminar was hosted by Professor Yan Zhijun and attended by ma"Crowdsourcing Contest" refers to online crowdsourcing platforms, which provide a place for companies (seekers) seeking solutions to interact with individuals (solvers) who can provide solutions. Seekers obtain solutions from the solvers by publishing task requirements and setting bonuses. Professor Chen first introduced the relevant background and research motivation of online crowdsourcing platform in detail. With the continuous expansion of the online crowdsourcing platform, some task seekers worry that their tasks cannot attract enough participants, which makes it difficult to solve the tasks. In order to solve this problem, the crowdsourcing platform provides a separate publicity plan for the seekers. According to the plan, the seekers need to pay extra fees to highlight their tasks among many tasks, so as to attract the attention of the solvers. However, it is not clear whether this plan can really enhance the participation of the solvers. Professor Chen's work explored the impact of this publicity plan on the participation of solvers, analyzed the impact of this plan on the number of solvers attracted by the task, the number of high-quality solvers and the number of solutions, and explored the regulatory role of the number of bonuses, task process and the ability of solvers.

The research results show that the plan does not always improve the participation of solvers. Only when the bonus for a task is high, the plan will increase the number of solvers. In addition, even if the number of solvers increases, the increase is mainly due to low capacity solvers. At the same time, the impact of the plan will be weakened as the duration of the task goes by for high capacity solvers, and the impact of the plan will also be weakened for solvers with more experience on the platform.

After the report, the teachers and students at the meeting had a positive and full discussion with Professor Chen. The report received a warm response and was unanimously praised by teachers and students.

Profile of Professor Chen Jianqing:

Jianqing Chen, professor of the Department of Information Systems, Naveen Jindal School of Business, University of Texas, Dallas, USA, received a bachelor's and master's degree from Tsinghua University, and a doctor's degree from the University of Texas, Austin. At present, Professor Chen Jianqing mainly focuses on the platform business model, social media and user-generated content, search advertising, and economics in information systems. Many of his studies have been published in international top academic journals such as Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Management Science, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Production and Operations Management. He is currently the deputy editor of Information Systems Research and the senior editor of Production and Operations Management.