Follow the leader (or not): the influence of superstars on crowd size in crowdsourcing contests

Purpose As the application of crowdsourcing contests grows, leveraging the participation of superstars (i.e. solvers who have outstanding performance records in a crowdsourcing platform) becomes an emergent approach for managers to solve crowdsourced problems. Although much is known about superstars’ performance implications, it remains unclear whether and how their participation affects the size of a contest crowd for a crowdsourcing contest. Based on social contagion theory, this paper aims to examine the impact of superstars’ participation on the crowd size and studies how this impact varies across solvers with different heterogeneity in terms of skills, exposure and cultural proximity with superstars in crowdsourcing contests. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses secondary data from one crowdsourcing platform that includes 6,587 innovation contests to examine superstars’ main and contextual effects on the crowd size of a contest. Findings Our results reveal that superstars’ participation positively affects the crowd size of a contest in general. This finding suggests that social contagion is a fundamental mechanism underlying crowd formation in crowdsourcing contests. Our results also indicate that in contests that involve multiple superstars, superstars’ effect on crowd size becomes negative when we simultaneously consider other solvers’ heterogeneity in terms of skills, exposure and cultural background, and this negative effect will be intensified by increases in the skill gap, extent of exposure and cultural proximity between superstars and other solvers in the same contest. Originality/value Our research enhances the understanding of the influence of superstars and the mechanism underlying the emergence of contest crowds in crowdsourcing contests and contributes knowledge to better understand social contagion in a competitive setting. The results are meaningful for sourcing managers and platform supervisors to design contests and supervise crowd size in crowdsourcing contests.