The Outcomes of Consumer Work in Crowdsourcing Platforms: Psychological Ownership and Consumer Citizenship Behavior

摘要

Crowdsourcing allows companies to harness the competencies and productive energy of consumers whose collective work can produce something of greater value than the firm can produce alone. For this research, we worked with one such company3/4a leading producer of digitized nautical maps, whose consumers are empowered, and indeed encouraged, to edit and add features to digitized maps of waterways they navigate with the company's app. These consumer workers are the context of our current study as we aim to contribute to the literature by investigating the psychological dynamics related to consumption in crowdsourcing platforms. We draw on research from both consumer behavior and organizational studies, blending research on crowdsourcing, consumer empowerment, theories of consumer work and work in organizations, psychological ownership, and citizenship behavior. Psychological ownership is the sense of possession one holds for an object, entity or idea irrespective of whether there is legal ownership (Pierce, Kostova and Dirks 2001), while citizenship behaviors are non-prescribed actions that contribute to the wellbeing and growth of an organization or community (Organ 1988). Specifically, we ask the following: what is the role of psychological ownership in the relationship between consumer work and citizenship behavior?