Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Publication Date

Spring 4-11-2023

Abstract

This thesis addresses the challenge of user recruitment by various competing marketing agencies (MAs) in Online Social Networks. A labor economics approach, following the principles of contract theory, is devised to enable MAs to reveal the potential of each participating user to contribute a personalized level of quality and quantity of information to the crowdsourcing process. The MAs objective is to maximize their personal benefit, i.e., total utility obtained, given its budget. The latter optimization problem is formulated as a Generalized Colonel Blotto (GCB) game among the MAs, where each MA aims at incentivizing each user to report its information. A Pure Nash Equilibrium (PNE) is determined resulting in the optimal rewards each MA should provide to each user. The performance evaluation of the proposed approach is achieved via modeling and simulation, and numerical results are presented to reveal the benefits of the proposed crowdsourcing model under different scenarios.

Keywords

Labor Economics, Colonel Blotto Game, Social Networks, Crowdsourcing, Optimization, Game Theoretic

Document Type

Thesis

Language

English

Degree Name

Computer Engineering

Level of Degree

Masters

Department Name

Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Committee Member (Chair)

Dr. Eirini Eleni Tsiropoulou

Second Committee Member

Dr. Jim Plusquellic

Third Committee Member

Dr. Symeon Papavassiliou

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