Award scheme in productivity-based contests

In this paper, we study the award scheme in the productivity-based contests in which the solvers' performance is the product of the effort and their heterogeneous abilities. We consider the cases in which the seeker cares about the expected average quality (expected maximum quality) of solutions and the number of solvers is fixed. Our results show that the risk types of solvers, heterogeneous winning probability, and relative heterogeneity among the solvers can affect the award scheme and award allocation manner. Our study can provide some management insights for the seeker and enrich the heterogeneous contest theory.