Effects of rationale awareness in online ideation crowdsourcing tasks

Abstract

Prior studies have shown that articulating and sharing rationales in traditional small-group activities contribute to the maintenance of common ground, members' knowledge awareness, and contribution awareness. It is likely that the importance of articulating and sharing rationales will be increasingly acknowledged in online crowdsourcing because in such a context, large-scale participation is expected with participants often not knowing each other and being flexible about their participation status (e.g., participants may join after the activity has started and leave before it completes), and thus more grounding efforts/support are expected. To better understand the role of shared rationales in online crowdsourcing, three experiments were conducted investigating whether and how rationale awareness affects the ideation crowdsourcing task and ideaevaluation crowdsourcing task based on the findings about the rationale awareness effects in small-group idea-generation activities. The results suggest that one's awareness of previous workers' rationales in the current task can slightly improve the average quality of generated ideas in an iterative approach. In addition, one's evaluation of an idea could be positively or negatively affected by the idea's rationale depending on the quality of the rationales. The results also suggest that showing previous workers' rationales in the ideation task may not be an effective approach for improving the best quality of generated ideas.

The influence of diversity and experience on the effects of crowd size

“…Yet, unlike their organizational counterparts, we know much less about what facilitates better retention and performance in crowds (Qin, Salter‐Townshend, & Cunningham, ). As a result, our knowledge of what leads to effective crowd work has not kept pace with the deployment of crowds in our global economy (Ransbotham & Kane, ; Xiao, ). As crowds become increasingly vital to how work gets done, there is a need to better comprehend what conditions facilitate better retention and performance (Arazy, Yeo, & Nov, ).…”

Untapped potential of collective intelligence in conservation and environmental decision making

“…). For instance, output quality on a creative task improves when workers are informed of other contributors’ efforts and their rationales (Xiao ).…”

“…Crowdsourcing complex or creative products may require active promotion of collective learning and tailored feedback (e.g., Cullina et al 2015). For instance, output quality on a creative task improves when workers are informed of other contributors' efforts and their rationales (Xiao 2014).…”

Discourse relations in rationale‐containing text‐segments

“…To examine this, Xiao proposed the concept of rationale awareness , that is, the awareness of the group members’ rationales related to the tasks (Xiao, ). The related studies suggested that the individual's rationale awareness has helped one to be better aware of the other group members’ domain expertise and intellectual contributions in idea generation activities in both small group setting (Xiao, ) and crowdsourcing situations (Xiao, ). Xiao further found that members developed practices switching between the idea space and the rationale space and there was a convergence in members’ linguistic styles in their rationales (Xiao & Carroll, ).…”

“…In the small group study, participants complained that knowing the others’ rationales made it challenging for them to think of other ideas (Xiao, ). In the online crowdsourcing study, the rationale awareness did not improve the best quality of the generated ideas (Xiao, ).…”