Understanding crowdsourcing adoption based on IT managers’ decision

Crowdsourcing has been recognized as a key means to leverage solvers’ expertise for seeker firms’ on-demand value creation. However, the lack of long-term relationship with a specific solver creates uncertainty and few empirical studies considered seeker firms’ adoption decision based on resource and ability provision from solvers. This study fills this gap by proposing a comprehensive model that integrates the resource-based view with the theory of reasoned action. This model captures IT managers’ reasoned action from opportunity-cost evaluation, which in turn is influenced by the value creation from solvers externally. Specifically, solvers’ ability is conceptualized as expertise, service quality, and compatibility in terms of coordination of partners’ capabilities. This study uses survey method for data collection and partial least squares for testing hypotheses. The results show that operational expertise, service quality, and business-process compatibility exert positive impact on opportunity-cost evaluation. This evaluation in turn affects adoption intention.