{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T04:14:24Z","timestamp":1760242464025,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":25,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2017,9,4]],"date-time":"2017-09-04T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1504483200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Algorithms"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Mobile crowdsourcing networks (MCNs) are a promising method of data collecting and processing by leveraging the mobile devices\u2019 sensing and computing capabilities. However, because of the selfish characteristics of the service provider (SP) and mobile users (MUs), crowdsourcing participants only aim to maximize their own benefits. This paper investigates the incentive mechanism between the above two parties to create mutual benefits. By modeling MCNs as a labor market, a contract-based crowdsourcing model with moral hazard is proposed under the asymmetric information scenario. In order to incentivize the potential MUs to participate in crowdsourcing tasks, the optimization problem is formulated to maximize the SP\u2019s utility by jointly examining the crowdsourcing participants\u2019 risk preferences. The impact of crowdsourcing participants\u2019 attitudes of risks on the incentive mechanism has been studied analytically and experimentally. Numerical simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed contract design scheme for the crowdsourcing incentive.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/a10030104","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2017,9,4]],"date-time":"2017-09-04T11:11:52Z","timestamp":1504523512000},"page":"104","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":6,"title":["Contract-Based Incentive Mechanism for Mobile Crowdsourcing Networks"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"10","author":[{"given":"Nan","family":"Zhao","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Hubei Collaborative Innovation Center for High-efficiency Utilization of Solar Energy, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan 430068, China"}]},{"given":"Menglin","family":"Fan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Hubei Collaborative Innovation Center for High-efficiency Utilization of Solar Energy, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan 430068, China"}]},{"given":"Chao","family":"Tian","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Hubei Key Laboratory for High-efficiency Utilization of Solar Energy and Operation Control of Energy Storage System, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan 430068, China"}]},{"given":"Pengfei","family":"Fan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Hubei Power Grid Intelligent Control and Equipment Engineering Technology Research Center, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan 430068, China"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,9,4]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"75","DOI":"10.1109\/MCOM.2015.7180511","article-title":"Security and privacy in mobile crowdsourcing networks: Challenges and opportunities","volume":"53","author":"Yang","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"98","DOI":"10.1109\/MCOM.2015.7060488","article-title":"Exploiting mobile crowdsourcing for pervasive cloud services: Challenges and solutions","volume":"53","author":"Ren","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Franklin, M., Kossmann, D., Kraska, T., Ramesh, S., and Xin, R. (2011, January 12\u201316). Crowddb: Answering queries with crowdsourcing. Proceedings of the ACM SIGMOD, Athens, Greece.","DOI":"10.1145\/1989323.1989331"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Fernando, N., Loke, S., Rahayu, W., and Wenny, W. (2013, January 2\u20134). Honeybee: A programming framework for mobile crowd computing. Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking, and Services, Tokyo, Japan.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-40238-8_19"},{"key":"ref_5","unstructured":"Koukoumidis, E., Peh, S., and Martonosi, M. (July, January 28). Signalguru: Leveraging mobile phones for collaborative traffic signal schedule advisory. Proceedings of the ACM MobiSys, Bethesda, MD, USA."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ra, M., Liu, B., Porta, T., and Govindan, R. (2012, January 25\u201329). Medusa: A programming framework for crowd-sensing applications. Proceedings of the ACM MobiSys, Ambleside, UK.","DOI":"10.1145\/2307636.2307668"},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"157","DOI":"10.1109\/MCOM.2015.7295478","article-title":"When crowdsourcing meets mobile sensing: A social network perspective","volume":"53","author":"Chen","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"54","DOI":"10.1109\/COMST.2015.2415528","article-title":"Incentives for mobile crowd sensing: A survey","volume":"18","author":"Zhang","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor."},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"4","DOI":"10.1145\/1077246.1077257","article-title":"Pervasive games: Bringing computer entertainment back to the real world","volume":"3","author":"Magerkurth","year":"2005","journal-title":"ACM Comput. Entertain."},{"key":"ref_10","first-page":"2120","article-title":"A review of mobile location-based games for learning across physical and virtual spaces","volume":"18","author":"Avouris","year":"2012","journal-title":"J. Univ. Comput. Sci."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Luo, T., and Tham, C. (2012, January 18\u201321). Fairness and social welfare in incentivizing participatory sensing. Proceedings of the IEEE SECON, Seoul, Korea.","DOI":"10.1109\/SECON.2012.6275807"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1152","DOI":"10.1016\/j.procs.2012.06.165","article-title":"An incentive-based framework for vehicle-based mobile sensing","volume":"10","author":"Lan","year":"2012","journal-title":"Procedia Comput. Sci."},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Chen, P., Ao, W., Lin, S., and Chen, K. (2011, January 5\u20139). Reciprocal spectrum sharing game and mechanism in cellular systems with cognitive radio users. Proceedings of the IEEE GLOBECOM Workshops, Houston, TX, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/GLOCOMW.2011.6162603"},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Yang, D., Xue, G., Fang, X., and Tang, J. (2012, January 22\u201326). Crowdsourcing to smartphones: Incentive mechanism design for mobile phone sensing. Proceedings of the ACM Mobicom, Istanbul, Turkey.","DOI":"10.1145\/2348543.2348567"},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3190","DOI":"10.1109\/TPDS.2013.2297112","article-title":"Free market of crowdsourcing: Incentive mechanism design for mobile sensing","volume":"25","author":"Zhang","year":"2014","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"647","DOI":"10.1109\/TNET.2014.2379281","article-title":"Budget-feasible online incentive mechanisms for crowdsourcing tasks truthfully","volume":"24","author":"Zhao","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE ACM Trans. Netw."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"473","DOI":"10.2307\/2297860","article-title":"An incomplete contracts approach to financial contracting","volume":"59","author":"Aghion","year":"1992","journal-title":"Rev. Econ. Stud."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"174","DOI":"10.1109\/TMC.2012.231","article-title":"Cooperative spectrum sharing: A contract-based approach","volume":"13","author":"Duan","year":"2014","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Mob. Comput."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"317","DOI":"10.1613\/jair.4940","article-title":"Adaptive contract design for crowdsourcing markets: Bandit algorithms for repeated principal-agent problems","volume":"55","author":"Ho","year":"2016","journal-title":"J. Artif. Intell. Res."},{"key":"ref_20","first-page":"1","article-title":"Cooperative communication in cognitive radio networks under asymmetric information: A contract-theory based approach","volume":"2015","author":"Zhao","year":"2015","journal-title":"Int. J. Distrib. Sens. Netw."},{"key":"ref_21","first-page":"1","article-title":"Optimal contract design for cooperative relay incentive mechanism under moral hazard","volume":"2015","author":"Zhao","year":"2015","journal-title":"J. Electr. Comput. Eng."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"14","DOI":"10.1016\/j.compeleceng.2017.04.025","article-title":"Monitoring strategy for relay incentive mechanism in cooperative communications networks","volume":"60","author":"Zhao","year":"2017","journal-title":"Comput. Electr. Eng."},{"key":"ref_23","unstructured":"Zhang, Y., Gu, Y., Liu, L., Pan, M., Dawy, Z., and Han, Z. (2015, January 9\u201312). Incentive mechanism in crowdsourcing with moral hazard. Proceedings of the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, New Orleans, LA, USA."},{"key":"ref_24","first-page":"231","article-title":"Risk analysis in theory and practice","volume":"2004","author":"Chavas","year":"2004","journal-title":"Risk Anal. Theor. Pract."},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2","DOI":"10.1287\/mnsc.1040.0229","article-title":"Incentives between firms (and within)","volume":"51","author":"Gibbons","year":"2005","journal-title":"Manag. Sci."}],"container-title":["Algorithms"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1999-4893\/10\/3\/104\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T18:44:03Z","timestamp":1760208243000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1999-4893\/10\/3\/104"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2017,9,4]]},"references-count":25,"journal-issue":{"issue":"3","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,9]]}},"alternative-id":["a10030104"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/a10030104","relation":{},"ISSN":["1999-4893"],"issn-type":[{"type":"electronic","value":"1999-4893"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2017,9,4]]}}}