Role of motivations, self-regulations, and perceived competitive intensity in solvers’ continuance intention in crowdsourcing contests

Crowdsourcing contest has emerged as an innovative way to source ideas and solutions from online public in which only the solvers who make the winning bids receive payoffs. The uncertainty of the payoffs, arising from the competitive attribute of these contests, gives rise to the necessity to understand what sustains solvers’ participation. This study extends self-determination theory (SDT) to the crowdsourcing contest setting to investigate how controlled and autonomous motivation influence solver continuance intention through self-regulations (i.e. metacognitive strategies and emotion control) and when the effect of different motivation types on self-regulations are more or less prevalent. The results indicate that metacognitive strategies do mediate the relationship between motivation type and continuance intention. Meanwhile, as perceived competitive intensity increases, the positive effect of controlled motivation on metacognitive strategies is stronger but its negative effect on emotion control is also exacerbated. In addition, autonomous motivation promotes solvers’ metacognitive strategies and emotion control despite the varying degrees of perceived competitive intensity. These findings offer precious managerial insights into solvers’ continuance intention in crowdsourcing contests.