Towards Crowdsourced Online Dispute Resolution

Abstract

Using crowdsourcing for solving disputes is a subject that has not been discussed in many scientific publications. However, since Crowdsourced Online Dispute Resolution (CODR) provides a cheap, fast, and democratic dispute resolution, it has a potential that needs to be explored scientifically. How should eBay solve otherwise 60 millions disputes per year? Building a CODR platform with the convenience and attractiveness of other collective intelligence systems, such as Wikipedia, YouTube, and Google, may cause many variants of traditional forms of dispute resolution fading away. In order to shed more light on CODR, the present contribution defines this new type of dispute resolution, describes the present state of play, and builds a theoretical framework by investigating CODR building blocks. Although the paper provides only the start of a profound discussion, it shows introductory explorations of the key theoretical issues involved in CODR.