Understanding Volunteer Crowdsourcing from a Multiplex Perspective

Information Systems Research, Forthcoming

59 Pages Posted: 21 Sep 2020 Last revised: 6 Feb 2024

See all articles by Yifan Yu

Yifan Yu

The University of Texas at Austin; Amazon

Xue (Jane) Tan

Cox School of Business

Yong Tan

University of Washington - Michael G. Foster School of Business

Date Written: November 30, 2020

Abstract

Crowdsourcing is about leveraging information technologies to outsource tasks to a large group of people, who can either be paid workers or non-paid workers. Differing from monetarily incentivized workers, non-paid workers are more likely to be affected by co-working relationships. To explore the link between the network and volunteering behavior, we construct dynamic collaboration networks from 827,260 unique volunteers’ participation in 183,445 projects initiated by 74,556 non-profit organizations over nine years in the capital city of China. Following a multiplex perspective, we allow each type of organization (i.e., school-based, community-based, other-based) to represent a separate network layer. We construct the measures of multiplex ties (i.e., social connections that are linked through multiple layers) and relational pluralism (i.e., involvement diversity in different layers). We find that volunteers with more multiplex ties and a lower level of relational pluralism have higher volunteering continuity and intensity of engagement, guaranteeing the supply of the volunteer labor force. However, they are less likely to explore unfamiliar organizations through inter-organization movements. At a macro level, we show how the reduced inter-organization movements impeded the development of small and newly established organizations. In addition, we show that incorporating these multiplexity measures improves the prediction of volunteer behavior by 5.390%, 1.624%, and 8.792% for continuity, movement, and engagement, respectively.

Keywords: Volunteerism, crowdsourcing, multiplexity, relational pluralism

JEL Classification: A13

Suggested Citation

Yu, Yifan and Tan, Xue and Tan, Yong, Understanding Volunteer Crowdsourcing from a Multiplex Perspective (November 30, 2020). Information Systems Research, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3691421 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3691421

Yifan Yu (Contact Author)

The University of Texas at Austin ( email )

2317 Speedway
Austin, TX Texas 78712
United States

Amazon ( email )

Xue Tan

Cox School of Business ( email )

P.O. Box 750333
Dallas, TX 75275-0333
United States

Yong Tan

University of Washington - Michael G. Foster School of Business ( email )

Box 353226
Seattle, WA 98195-3226
United States

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