![]() ![]() ![]() It is thus partly assigned via association with individuals in these groups as well as the products and experiences typical of them. In particular, status shows both distinction from inferior groups and identification with superior groups. Status seeking may also have a unique impact on crowdsourcing participation, not only influencing how individuals make evaluations but what they choose to contribute about. For example, since individuals tend to emulate the consumption styles of the higher-class individuals to enhance their own status, those observing that high status others have rated a particular product or experience favorably may also rate it favorably. In particular, like many behaviors governed by social norms, status seeking can homogenize the evaluations and other contributions made by crowd members. Yet status seeking may also be a source of bias or distortion in what is contributed by the crowd. In particular, Lampel and Bhalla’s study shows that status seeking is a reliable passion that motivates people to continuously participate in online communities. People seek status to improve their positions in groups or organizations. Status seeking is a type of social incentive for participation that is relevant to crowd wisdom, especially in crowdsourcing platforms that feature opportunities to display or signal status. For instance, people participate in citizen science project to enhance their reputation, and participate in crowdsourcing policymaking to mainly learn about the laws. It is also important to note that social incentives are very dependent on the platform and the type of activity. That is, to achieve the effect of the wisdom of crowd, these platforms require that many individuals volunteer their unique knowledge or evaluations. An important precondition for functional crowd wisdom is large-scale participation. One such influence is the social incentive for participation in the platform. Yet, little work has examined sources of distortion that are endemic to crowdsourcing itself. While these general sources of distortion can be a challenge, many can be addressed with policies, such as blinding others’ identifications, without sacrificing important aspects of a crowdsourcing site. Nonetheless, such social influences may distort the wisdom of any crowd or group, rather than influences that pertain specifically to the dynamics of crowdsourcing platforms. For instance, social influences such as herd effect can mislead crowds by homogenizing individual responses, reducing the crowds’ advantage in gathering diverse information. Researchers have long recognized this vulnerability in crowdsourcing. This provides a theoretical reason to take the content on platforms such as Wikipedia or Yelp seriously.Ĭrowds, however, are not always wise. The effect of wisdom of crowds refers to the idea that the judgments of many non-experts can be aggregated into a product whose quality rivals or even surpasses that of an expert. The “wisdom of crowds” is a commonly embraced idea by crowdsourced review sites. The findings suggest the importance of studying sources of distortion that are endemic to crowdsourcing itself. This leads to a different kind of distortion to crowd wisdom: an over-representation of status-conferring products and an under-representation of products that are not status-worthy. The impact of this individual-level tendency is confirmed by our aggregate-level analysis which shows that restaurants with higher price levels, higher uniqueness levels, and a larger percentage of elite reviews tend to obtain enough reviews to generate wisdom of crowds sooner than other restaurants. Using Yelp restaurant reviews in 6 cities, we found that motivations of status seeking lead people to review a greater variety of restaurants, and achieving status further encourages this variety seeking as well as the targeting of more expensive restaurants for review. ![]() This study shows that while status seeking motivates people to participate in crowdsourcing platforms, it also negatively impacts the bedrock of crowdsourcing–wisdom of crowds. ![]()
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