Effects of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivational Factors on Employee Participation in Internal Crowdsourcing Initiatives in China

The concept of crowdsourcing, categorized into internal and external emerged relatively recently. Internal crowdsourcing gained increasing popularity in Chinese organizations. Based on the self-determination theory (SDT), this study advances theoretical understanding effects employee motivation antecedents (the three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, relatedness) participation effort activities. Through an online survey, 435 employees information technology organizations southern China completed questionnaires which used for statistical analysis hypotheses testing. It was found that needs significantly positively impacted employees’ intrinsic motivation, with autonomy having most significant effect. Furthermore, only competence were associated extrinsic motivation. A positive relation observed between crowdsourcing. Although no direct relationship revealed effort, indirect effect via observed, aligned one main concepts SDT, internalization process to Accordingly, SDT model is applicable based findings study.