Anonymity and Peer-Feedback in Crowdsourcing: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Crowdsourcing lets firms tap into diverse sources of ideas and can be implemented either externally, by engaging customers, suppliers, or the public, or internally, by leveraging the expertise of organizational members. On top of the ideas submitted, a critical driver of crowdsourcing success is feedback by peers which helps refine and strengthen the initial submissions. Yet, peer feedback is frequently sparse in many crowdsourcing environments. We examine the role of anonymity in feedback-giving behavior among participants on a crowdsourcing platform. Running a field experiment on an internal crowdsourcing platform of a French business school, we find that anonymity increases the amount of feedback posted on the platform, but it also changes the nature of feedback: Anonymous feedback is shorter, contains less constructive, more negative content, and is less likely to be incorporated by ideators in their final idea proposals. Moreover, total effort per commenting individual is lower under anonymity. Based on our empirical findings, we propose a conceptual framework that explains peer feedback giving on crowdsourcing platforms as a function of two motivators, efficacy considerations and reputational gains, and discuss how anonymity alters the two.