Recruiting messages matter: Message strategies to attract citizen scientists

Tae Kyoung Lee, Kevin Crowston, Carsten Østerlund, Grant Miller

Research output: Chapter in Book/Entry/PoemConference contribution

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

Although participation of citizen scientists is critical for a success of citizen science projects (a distinctive form of crowdsourcing), little attention has been paid to what types of messages can effectively recruit citizen scientists. Derived from previous studies on citizen scientists' motivations, we created and sent participants one of four recruiting messages for a new project, Gravity Spy, appealing to different motivations (i.e., learning about science, social proof, contribution to science, and altruism). Counter to earlier studies on motivation, our results showed that messages appealing to learning, contribution and social proof were more effective than a message appealing to altruism. We discuss the inconsistency between the present and prior study results and plans for future work.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCSCW 2017 - Companion of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages227-230
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781450346887
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 25 2017
Event2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW 2017 - Portland, United States
Duration: Feb 25 2017Mar 1 2017

Publication series

NameCSCW 2017 - Companion of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

Other

Other2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW 2017
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPortland
Period2/25/173/1/17

Keywords

  • Citizen science
  • Motivation
  • Recruitment

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications

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