Does Money Matter? Motivational Factors for Participation in Paid- and Non-Profit-Crowdsourcing Communities

Crowdsourcing, the use of an undefined group of external people to complete tasks for the corporation, gained significantly in importance over the last years. Yet little is known about the factors that motivate participants to join crowdsourcing communities. This paper compares the findings of Kaufmann et al. [1] who conducted a study on MechanicalTurk -a profit oriented software development crowdsourcing platformwith the results of a questionnaire posed to the members of MobileWorks a non-profit crowdsourcing platform. Findings show that many motivational factors apply consistently whether forprofit or for-fun. However, some factors differ significantly; especially extrinsic factors are of far more importance in for-profit communities. The deeper analysis reveals that society may see a larger trend towards crowdsourcing as mean of employment, as more and more individuals regard it as serious work and reliable source of income.