title: Crowdsourcing contest dilemma.
abstract: Crowdsourcing offers unprecedented potential for solving tasks efficiently by tapping into the skills of large groups of people. A salient feature of crowdsourcing--its openness of entry--makes it vulnerable to malicious behaviour. Such behaviour took place in a number of recent popular crowdsourcing competitions. We provide game-theoretic analysis of a fundamental trade-off between the potential for increased productivity and the possibility of being set back by malicious behaviour. Our results show that in crowdsourcing competitions malicious behaviour is the norm, not the anomaly--a result contrary to the conventional wisdom in the area. Counterintuitively, making the attacks more costly does not deter them but leads to a less desirable outcome. These findings have cautionary implications for the design of crowdsourcing competitions.
authors.affiliation: School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK vn@ecs.soton.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Victor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Naroditskiy
authors.affiliation: School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK Department of Computing and Information Technology, King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Nicholas R
authors.initials: NR
authors.lastname: Jennings
authors.affiliation: National Information and Communications Technology Australia, Melbourne, Victoria 3003, Australia.
authors.forename: Pascal
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Van Hentenryck
authors.affiliation: National Information and Communications Technology Australia, Melbourne, Victoria 3003, Australia.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cebrian
mesh_terms: D003163:Competitive Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D005716:Game Theory; D005717:Games, Experimental; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D009042:Motivation
keywords: Prisoner's Dilemma; crowdsourcing; game theory