A process model to support the development of crowdsourcing projects to motivate the participation of older adults

Abstract

Crowdsourcing is a new concept associated with problem-solving where the crowd is its main element. Knowing what drives this audience to participate in crowdsourcing projects is a challenge, as is building projects that attract this audience. Our studies focused on two aspects. First, in the investigation of the planning and development of crowdsourcing projects, and second in the identification of the factors that lead people to collaborate with these projects. Crowdsourcing has a dynamic structure where knowledge, problem-solving, and sometimes decision-making can be attributed to unknown members of the crowd. These unique characteristics of crowdsourcing must be considered in its building process. In this thesis, our goal is to investigate crowdsourcing projects from two perspectives. From the developer's perspective, we investigated the construction of crowdsourcing. And from the user's perspective, we investigated the factors that motivate users to collaborate on these projects. To achieve this goal, we carried out several studies, using an exploratory qualitative research method. The investigation of the construction process and the investigation of the users' motivation followed the same procedures: (i) studies selected by literature review, and (ii) semi-structured interviews with developers and users. As the older adults' population is constantly growing and is little studied in technological field, our motivation study focused on this public. We conducted interviews with 40 older adults over 60 years of age. The interviews' analysis suggest that older adults are motivated by dynamic tasks, which stimulate their curiosity, increase their knowledge and skills, tasks that help them to care for their physical and mental health and, mainly, by tasks related to altruistic causes. With the results of the studies, we proposed a process model for the construction of crowdsourcing projects and a motivation model aimed at older adults, both to be used as a guide by managers and software developers.