# Research on Factors Affecting Solvers' Participation Time in Online Crowdsourcing Contests
## 6 Conclusions  
### Research Conclusions  
This study analyzed the factors affecting the solvers' participation time in the crowdsourcing contest, which helps firms or organizations to obtain higher quality solutions for crowdsourcing contest. We choose four factors including task design, task description, task communication process, and market environment and studied their impacts on the participation time of solvers in crowdsourcing contests. Based on the literature review and related theories, the following conclusions were drawn by using the latest data from the Taskcn.com website.  
First, Hypotheses 1a and 1b are verified by the empirical results in column 2 and we conclude that higher task rewards will increase the participation time of solvers, while task duration has an inverted U-shaped relationship with participation time, which suggests that the impact of the task duration on participation time is positive within a certain range. Until the duration exceeds a threshold, a longer task duration will increase the time cost of solvers and inversely reduce the participation time.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & **(1)** & **(2)** & **(3)** & **(4)** & **(5)** \\ \hline  & Ln(Participation & Ln(Participation & Ln(Participation & Ln(Participation & Ln(Participation \\  & Time) & Time) & Time) & Time) \\ \hline Ln(Rewards) & 0.4673 *** & 0.4431 *** & 0.5063 *** & 0.4026 *** & 0.3845 *** \\ \hline  & (0.000) & (0.000) & (0.000) & (0.000) \\ \hline Ln(Duration) & 0.7741 *** & 1.7746 *** & 1.8161 *** & 1.7806 *** & 1.7702 *** \\ \hline  & (0.000) & (0.000) & (0.000) & (0.000) \\ \hline  & & (0.000) & (0.000) & (0.000) & (0.000) \\ \hline Ln(Description & & & \(-\)0.1544 *** & \(-\)0.1333 *** & \(-\)0.1331 *** \\ \hline  & & & (0.000) & (0.000) & (0.000) \\ \hline Description & & & (0.000) & (0.000) & (0.000) \\ Attachment & & & 0.3812 *** & 0.2628 ** & 0.2684 ** \\ \hline  & & & (0.000) & (0.009) & (0.007) \\ \hline Task Feedback & & & & 0.1208 *** & 0.1195 *** \\ \hline  & & & (0.000) & (0.000) \\ \hline Extra & & & & 0.4892 *** & 0.4889 *** \\ Explanation & & & & (0.000) & (0.000) \\ \hline Ln(Task Density) & & & & & \(-\)0.4660 * \\ \hline  & & & & & (0.022) \\ \hline Ln(Market Price) & & & & & 0.6566 ** \\ \hline  & & & & & (0.002) \\ \hline Control variable & Yes & Yes & Yes & Yes & Yes \\ \hline Time dummy & & & & & \\ variable & Yes & Yes & Yes & Yes & Yes \\ \hline Constants & \(-\)0.0203 & \(-\)1.1148* & \(-\)0.7551 & \(-\)0.3831 & \(-\)2.6634 \\ \hline  & (0.960) & (0.011) & (0.096) & (0.399) & (0.082) \\ \hline N & 2500 & 2500 & 2348 & 2348 & 2348 \\ \hline R\({}^{2}\) & 0.186 & 0.199 & 0.207 & 0.225 & 0.229 \\ \hline F & 35.3944 & 36.1969 & 32.0488 & 32.0923 & 30.0730 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular} Note: For the \(p\)-values in parentheses, * means \(p<0.05\), ** means \(p<0.01\), *** means \(p<0.001\), and Yes indicates that control variables are included in the model.  
\end{table}
Table 4: Regression results.  
Second, Hypotheses 2a and 2b are verified by the results in column 3 and the length of the description released by seekers affects solvers' participation time. When the description length is too long, it has a negative effect on the participation time. Adding the description attachment often makes the description information clearer, and positively affects solvers to expend time to complete the task.  
Third, Hypotheses 3a and 3b are verified by the column 4 and we conclude that communication and supplemental explanations during the task process can help reduce task uncertainty and reduce information asymmetry between seekers and solvers, thus it is positively affecting solvers' participation time.  
Fourth, the Hypotheses 4a and 4b are verified by the column 5 and it shows that the greater the task density, the more choices the solver faces in the same time, the time allocated to each task will be reduced; when the market price is high, the solver will invest more time to participate in order to increase the expected value of winning.