Achieving Success in Community Crowdsourcing: Lessons from the Field

Abstract

Community crowdsourcing is a relatively new phenomenon where local institutions, such as cities and neighborhoods, invite citizens to engage in a public discussion and solve problems that directly affect them. While community crowdsourcing has been around for over a decade, relatively little is known about what drives the success of these initiatives. In this exploratory study, we analyze field data from over 1,000 community crowdsourcing projects that were hosted on a professional community crowdsourcing platform. Our exploration reveals interesting insights into characteristics of community crowdsourcing projects that are associated with higher levels of user engagement. These insights allow us to speculate on guidelines to organize and execute community crowdsourcing initiatives.