The Economic Anatomy of Paid Crowdsourcing Platforms

In this paper, the business models of paid crowdsourcing platforms are investigated with an accent on pricing, matching, and assembling principles. An integrated Platform Economic Design (PED) framework is developed for this type of platform that incorporates a wide range of mechanisms available for platform economic design. The usage of this framework allows systematic comparison and classification of business models of reviewed existing paid crowdsourcing platforms. The research has the purpose of exploring the contemporary situation on a descriptive basis. We were able to identify and gather data on 45 of platforms. The study shows that connections between mechanisms can be found on used data and platforms tend to differ systematically in terms of employed economic structure. The paper is concluded with reflections on challenges for paid crowdsourcing platforms as well as a research perspective that could contribute to their further development.