Do games attract or sustain engagement in citizen science? A study of volunteer motivations

Iacovides, Ioanna; Jennett, Charlene; Cornish-Trestrail, Cassandra and Cox, Anna L. (2013). Do games attract or sustain engagement in citizen science? A study of volunteer motivations. In: CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, New York, USA, pp. 1101–1106.

Full text available as:

Preview

PDF (Accepted Manuscript) - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader
Download (401kB) | Preview

DOI (Digital Object Identifier) Link:	https://doi.org/10.1145/2468356.2468553
Google Scholar:	Look up in Google Scholar

Abstract

Increasingly, games are being incorporated in online citizen science (CS) projects as a way of crowdsourcing data; yet the influence of gamification on volunteer motivations and engagement in CS projects is still unknown. In an interview study with 8 CS volunteers (4 from Foldit, 4 from Eyewire), we found that game elements and communication tools are not necessary for attracting new volunteers to a project; however they may help to sustain engagement over time, by allowing volunteers to participate in a range of social interactions and through enabling meaningful recognition of achievements.

Item Type:

Conference or Workshop Item

2013 The Author(s)

ISBN:

1-4503-1952-1, 978-1-4503-1952-2

Project Funding Details:

Funded Project Name	Project ID	Funding Body
CHI+MED	EP/G059063/1	EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)
Citizen Cyberlab	317705	EU (European Union)

Keywords:

Citizen Science; Online Communities; Games; Gamification; Motivation; Engagement

Academic Unit/School:

Learning Teaching and Innovation (LTI) > Institute of Educational Technology (IET)
Learning Teaching and Innovation (LTI)

Interdisciplinary Research Centre:

Health and Wellbeing PRA (Priority Research Area)

Item ID:

46987

Depositing User:

Ioanna Iacovides

Date Deposited:

11 Aug 2016 15:41

Last Modified:

16 Aug 2017 15:36

URI:

http://oro.open.ac.uk/id/eprint/46987

Share this page:

Altmetrics

Download history for this item

These details should be considered as only a guide to the number of downloads performed manually. Algorithmic methods have been applied in an attempt to remove automated downloads from the displayed statistics but no guarantee can be made as to the accuracy of the figures.

Actions (login may be required)

CORE (COnnecting REpositories)

Policies | Disclaimer