"Guess what! You're the first to see this event": Increasing contribution to online production communities

Corey Jackson, Kevin Crowston, Gabriel Mugar, Carsten Østerlund

Research output: Chapter in Book/Entry/PoemConference contribution

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the results of an online field experiment examining the impacts of messaging about task novelty on the volume of volunteers' contributions to an online citizen science project. Encouraging volunteers to provide a little more content as they work is an attractive strategy to increase the community's output. Prior research found that an important motivation for participation in online citizen science is the wonder of being the first person to observe a particular image. To appeal to this motivation, a pop-up message was added to an online citizen science project that alerted volunteers when they were the first to annotate a particular image. Our analysis reveals that new volunteers who saw these messages increased the volume of annotations they contributed. The results of our study suggest an additional strategy to increase the amount of work volunteers contribute to online communities and citizen science projects specifically.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationGROUP 2016 - Conference Program
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages171-179
Number of pages9
ISBN (Electronic)9781450342766
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 13 2016
Event19th ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, GROUP 2016 - Sanibel Island, United States
Duration: Nov 13 2016Nov 16 2016

Publication series

NameProceedings of the International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work
Volume13-16-November-2016

Other

Other19th ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, GROUP 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySanibel Island
Period11/13/1611/16/16

Keywords

  • Citizen science
  • Experiment
  • Intention to treat
  • Motivation
  • Novelty
  • Online communities

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Computer Science

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