Gamification Techniques and Contribution Filtering in Crowdsourcing Micro-Task Applications

Abstract

The rapid expansion of the internet has led to a growing worldwide user base, with Brazil alone having approximately 83% of households connected to the network, equating to around 61.8 million households. Crowdsourcing, a production model that harnesses collective wisdom for problem-solving, has gained prominence in this digital landscape. Challenges in crowdsourcing include improving people's motivation and engagement and verifying the quality of a high number of contributions. In our research, we investigated the hypothesis that using gamification techniques, including recognition badges, feedback mechanisms, and user rankings, improves users' engagement and motivation in crowdsourcing micro-tasks applications. This paper presents ConTask, a crowdsourcing micro-task application, and two studies conducted to investigate the impact of using gamification techniques and contribution filtering as motivational factors in crowdsourcing. The first was a case study comparing two versions of ConTask: the original version and a gamified one. The second was an experimental study to evaluate the developed contribution filtering mechanism. Findings suggest that the use of gamification and contribution filtering can improve user participation in crowdsourcing micro-task applications.