Factors influencing bid-winning performance in mixed crowdsourcing: The persuasive effect of credible information sources

Mixed crowdsourcing is increasingly becoming the main organizational model of domestic crowdsourcing platforms. However, research on the interpretation of winning performance fails to focus on the persuasive effect of the credibility of the contractor's information source on the contractee's decision making. Based on source credibility theory (SCT), this study constructs a model of the factors influencing the contractor's bid-winning performance based on three aspects—credibility, professionalism, and attractiveness—and examines the moderating effect of positive contractor evaluations from previous tasks on the bid decision. The results reveal that integrity guarantee and contact authentication (which belong to the credibility dimension), as well as ability level and professional identity (professionalism dimension) positively affect the contractor's bid-winning performance, and that an inverted-U-shaped relationship exists between the number of services displayed by the contractors (attractiveness dimension) and bid-winning performance.