Crowdsourced software development: Exploring the motivational and inhibiting factors of the South African crowd

This research paper explores what factors contribute to software developers in South Africa taking part in crowdsourced software development. These factors include motivations as well as challenges and this research takes an in depth look at what incentives affect the different motives to participate in crowdsourcing. To explore these factors, the Motives, Incentives, Activation, and Behaviour (MIAB) research has been adapted to investigate what incentives contribute to the motivations of money, pleasure, self-efficacy, and altruism. The research analyses data from respondents that are either software developers or work in software development and comes to the conclusion that there are various incentives that contribute to the different motives for taking part in crowdsourced software development, however, for developers in South Africa, pleasure, self-efficacy, and altruism seem to be more important than that of receiving income for crowdsourcing tasks.