The influence of motivational factors on the frequency of participation in citizen science activities

Abstract

Citation: Tiago P, Gouveia MJ, Capinha C, Santos-Reis M, Pereira HM (2017) The influence of motivational factors on the frequency of participation in citizen science activities. Nature Conservation 18: 61-78. https://doi.org/10.3897/ natureconservation.18.13429 AbstractCitizen science has become a mainstream approach to collect information and data on many different scientific subjects. In this study, we assess the effectiveness of engagement and meaningful experience of participants in citizen science projects. We use motivational measures calculated from a web survey where respondents answered questions regarding to their motivation to participate in BioDiversity4All, a Portuguese citizen science project. We adapted the intrinsic motivation inventory (IMI) and considered seven categories of measurement: Interest/Enjoyment, Perceived Competence, Effort/Importance, Perceived Choice, Value/Usefulness, Project Relatedness, and Group Relatedness each of them with statements rated on a seven-point Likert scale. We received 149 survey responses, corresponding to 10.3 % of BioDiversity4All Newsletter's receivers. We analyzed for possible differences among the categories pertaining to gender, age, level of education and level of participation in the project. Finally, we assessed the different patterns of motivation existing among the users. No statistical differences were found between genders, age classes and levels of education for the averages in any category of analysis. However, IMI categories presented different results for respondents with different levels of participation. The highest value of Interest/Enjoy- RESEARCH ARTICLE Launched to accelerate biodiversity conservation A peer-reviewed open-access journalPatrícia Tiago et al. / Nature Conservation 18: 61-78 (2017) 62 ment and Perceived Competence was obtained by the group of respondents that participate a lot and the lowest by the ones that never participated. Project Relatedness had the highest value for all groups except for the group that never participated. This group had completely different motivations from the other groups, showing the lowest levels in categories such as Perceived Competence, Value/Usefulness, Project Relatedness and Group Relatedness. In conclusion, the results from our work show that working deeply on people's involvement is fundamental to increase and maintain their participation on citizen science projects. If, for initial recruitment and in countries with low participation culture, mechanisms of external motivation may be necessary, to guarantee higher levels of long term participation, citizen science projects should foster intrinsic motivations which can be done by incorporating in project design experiences of relatedness, capacity building, positive feedback and adapted participation modes.

Enhancing Volunteers’ Intention to Engage in Citizen Science: The Roles of Self-Efficacy, Satisfaction and Science Trust

“…Data were obtained from 156 questionnaires via the cross-sectional method from 39 Science Volunteer Teams by using the simple random technique. Based on the literature presented in this article (Ravetz & Saltelli, 2015;Tiago et al, 2017;Wright et al, 2015), this research first examined a measurement model, including Self-efficacy, Satisfaction, and Science Trust. Following this, this research conducted SEM analyses to test the hypothesized effects of the predictors on Intention to Continue Volunteering.…”

Quality and timing of crowd‐based water level class observations

“…Based on personal conversations with the main contributors to locations A2 and A4 and a motivation survey (Etter, van Meerveld, Seibert, Strobl, & Niebert, in review), we assume that creating and maintaining own locations serves the needs for autonomy and competence. These are, in combination with the relatedness of one's own contributions to a broader topic, important aspects for self‐determined and intrinsically motivated activism (Tiago, Gouveia, Capinha, Santos‐Reis, & Pereira, 2017) according to self‐determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Frensley et al (2017) argued that the motivation to participate in volunteering is increased if these three feelings are met.…”

Citizen science and the professional-amateur divide: lessons from differing online practices

“…More could be done regarding acknowledging individual contribution to the overall outcomes, and providing feedback on performance and impact tailored to each volunteer. This could assist with making citizen scientists feel more involved with the project and aware of their importance, which can provide motivation to participate [Raddick et al, 2013;Tiago et al, 2017].…”

“…The participant acts as the analyst, usually studying previously collected and remotely sensed data by the professional research community displayed to them through a website interface [Reed, Rodriguez and Rickhoff, 2012]. Volunteers have complex motivations for participating, including contributing to science, learning and research, and for their own interest, and researchers are discovering new ways of engaging users through design and interaction [Jackson et al, 2016;Raddick et al, 2013;Tiago et al, 2017;Wiggins and Crowston, 2011;Woodcock et al, 2017].…”