Relationship between Design Elements and Performance in Online Innovation Contests: Contest Sequence is Moderator?

As an important issue in the field of innovation contest, performance of innovation contest has been attracting the attention of both academics and practioners over recent years. This paper explores the factors influencing performance of online innovation contest from the design elements perspective. The study is based on the empirical research of the online innovation contest community - studio.Topcoder.com. We find the longer the contest duration, the higher contest performance in the one-stage contest. The results also show that too much detailed task description will reduce the performance of the one-stage contests, but will increase the number of solvers in the two-stage contests. The results also reveal that the incentive effect of first prize in the one-stage contests is stronger than that in the two-stage contests, while the incentive effect of second prize in the two-stage contests is stronger than that in the one-stage contests, and if the amount of second prize is close to the prize amount, the number of solvers and eligible solutions will raise.