Analysis of Enterprise Sustainable Crowdsourcing Incentive Mechanism Based on Principal-Agent Model

The utilization of crowdsourcing to acquire distant knowledge is increasing. In the new product development process, sustainable crowdsourcing is an effective way to exploit both external and internal resources to boost enterprise innovation quality and the efficiency of the competitive edge of macro tasks in a relatively long cycle. The challenge of sustainable crowdsourcing is how to design a proper incentive mechanism to achieve the maximum initiator profit and, at the same time, satisfy the solver’s motivation so that they can continuously participate in the innovation process. In two situations, including a single motivation and multiple motivations of the solver, this paper analyzed the impact of a few factors on the initiator’s profit and the incentive coefficient for the solver based on the Principal–Agent Model. From the model and simulation results, the solver’s incentive coefficient is positively correlated to the solver’s work quality and negatively correlated to the uncertainty of the enterprise operation, the solver’s Effort Cost, the solver’s degree of risk aversion, etc. If the initiator is more sensitive to the benefits of the solver’s intrinsic motivation, the monetary incentive will be higher. The research results provide a theoretical basis to quantify the initiator’s expected profit and design a proper incentive plan for the solver. Finally, the conclusions offer practical guidance for enterprise to execute incentive plans for sustainable crowdsourcing from the perspective of the solver’s motivation.