title: Activating social strategies: Face-to-face interaction in technology-mediated citizen science.
abstract: The use of crowds in research activities by public and private organizations is growing under different forms. Citizen science is a popular means of engaging the general public in research activities led by professional scientists. By involving a large number of amateur scientists, citizen science enables distributed data collection and analysis on a scale that would be otherwise difficult and costly to achieve. While advancements in information technology in the past few decades have fostered the growth of citizen science through online participation, several projects continue to fail due to limited participation. Such web-based projects may isolate the citizen scientists from the researchers. By adopting the perspective of social strategy, we investigate within a measure-manipulate-measure experiment if motivations to participate in a citizen science project can be positively influenced by a face-to-face interaction with the scientists leading the project. Such an interaction provides the participants with the possibility of asking questions on the spot and obtaining a detailed explanation of the citizen science project, its scientific merit, and environmental relevance. Social and cultural factors that moderate the effect brought about by face-to-face interactions on the motivations are also dissected and analyzed. Our findings provide an exploratory insight into a means for motivating crowds to participate in online environmental monitoring projects, also offering possible selection criteria of target audience.
authors: New York University, Tandon School of Engineering, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Brooklyn, 11201 New York, USA; LUISS Guido Carli University, Department of Business and Management, 00197 Rome, Italy; Tuscia University, Department of Economy and Business, 01100 Viterbo, Italy.
authors: Francesco
authors: F
authors: Cappa
authors: New York University, Tandon School of Engineering, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Brooklyn, 11201 New York, USA.
authors: Jeffrey
authors: J
authors: Laut
authors: New York University, Tandon School of Engineering, Department of Technology Management, Brooklyn, 11201 New York, USA.
authors: Oded
authors: O
authors: Nov
authors: LUISS Guido Carli University, Department of Business and Management, 00197 Rome, Italy. Electronic address: lgiusti@luiss.it.
authors: Luca
authors: L
authors: Giustiniano
authors: New York University, Tandon School of Engineering, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Brooklyn, 11201 New York, USA. Electronic address: mporfiri@nyu.edu.
authors: Maurizio
authors: M
authors: Porfiri
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003142:Communication; D003256:Community Participation; D055812:Community-Based Participatory Research; D055669:Ecological and Environmental Phenomena; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009519:New York City; D012586:Science; D012944:Social Support
keywords: Citizen science; Crowd involvement; Environmental monitoring; Face-to-face interaction; Motivations; Social strategy