How the general public appraises contributory citizen science: Factors that affect participation

Abstract

Understanding the factors that affect participation plays a crucial role in the success of any contributory citizen science project. We focus our study on the general public, who most likely have not participated in citizen science before, since they constitute a large part of society and their opinions have not been studied thoroughly. We first describe the survey, which was answered by 209 respondents in Germany who mostly had no prior experience in citizen science, that seeks to addressthe factors of personality traits, properties of citizen science projects, and general motivations. Our study focuses on two different levels of participation: in specific sample projects and in contributory citizen science in general, both of which are embedded in the survey. We use manual text clustering and linear regression models to study the different types of inputs from the respondents. We identify contribution to science, the fun element of the projects, personal interests, and new knowledge acquired from participation as the most significant motivators for the future intention of participating in the sample citizen science projects. On a higher level, the general motivations concerning “values” and “understanding” are the main drivers behind participants’ future intention of participating in contributory citizen science. Meanwhile, no personality traits are found to be influence the intentions of the respondents. Based on these findings, several enhancements to the recruitment and communication strategies of citizen science projects can be made to maximize the participation of potential citizen scientists.