Reputation-Based Dynamic Contract Incentive Mechanism in Mobile Crowdsourcing Network

Abstract Mobile crowdsourcing network is a promising technology utilizing the mobile ter- minal’s sensing and computing capabilities to collect and process data. However, because the mobile users (MUs) have selfish characteristics, the MUs only aim at maximizing their benefits. Therefore, how to design an appropriate long-term incentive mechanism for the service provider (SP) in dynamic environments is an urgent problem. In this work, we investigate the reputation-based dynamic contract for mobile crowdsourcing network. A two-period dynamic contract is first investi- gated to deal with the asymmetric information problem in the long-term crowd- sourcing tasks. Reputation strategy is introduced to attract the MUs to complete the long-term tasks. The incentives of the contract and the implicit incentives of the reputation strategy are used together to encourage MUs to complete the long-term crowdsourcing tasks. The optimization strategy is formulated by adjust- ing the reputation coefficient to maximize the SP’s utility. The impact of MUs’ risk attitude and reputation impact factors on the incentive mechanism is studied through experiments. Numerical simulation results demonstrate that the optimal reputation-based contract design scheme is efficient in the Mobile crowdsourcing networks.