The Trustworthiness of Online Reference Group and Participation Behavior of Crowd in Crowdsourcing e-Market

Crowdsourcing e-market provides a lot of advantages to solve problems of organizations, companies and individuals. As a result, it’s important to develop an understanding of online reference group and participation behavior of crowd. The authors argue that reference group can obtain trustworthiness in the eyes of the crowd, such as integrity trustworthiness and ability trustworthiness. The trustworthiness of online reference group has influence on the participation behaviors of crowd. The authors test these ideas by examining the crowdsoucing process on zhubajie e-market in March 2012. When the perceived uncertainty is high, the effect of integrity trustworthiness on participation behavior is greater than ability trustworthiness. When the perceived uncertainty is low, the effect of ability trustworthiness on participation behavior is greater than integrity trustworthiness.