Trade-offs in motivating volunteer effort: Experimental evidence on voluntary contributions to science

Digitization has facilitated the proliferation of crowd science by lowering the cost of finding individuals with the willingness to participate in science without pay. However, the factors that influence participation and the outcomes of voluntary participation are unclear. We report two findings fr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2019-11, Vol.14 (11), p.e0224946
Main Authors: Lyons, Elizabeth, Zhang, Laurina
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Biology and Life Sciences
Charitable donations
Crowdsourcing
Digitization
Donations
Economics
Heterogeneity
Humans
Incentives
Management science
Motivation
People and Places
Physical Sciences
Quality
Research and Analysis Methods
Science
Science education
Science Policy
Smartphones
Social responsibility
Social Sciences
Time Factors
Volunteers
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Summary:Digitization has facilitated the proliferation of crowd science by lowering the cost of finding individuals with the willingness to participate in science without pay. However, the factors that influence participation and the outcomes of voluntary participation are unclear. We report two findings from a field experiment on the world's largest crowd science platform that tests how voluntary contributions to science are affected by providing clarifying information on either the desired outcome of a scientific task or the labor requirements for completing the task. First, there is significant heterogeneity in the motivations and ability of contributors to crowd science. Second, both of the information interventions lead to significant decreases in the quantity and increases in the quality of contributions. Combined, our findings are consistent with the information interventions improving match quality between the task and the volunteer. Our findings suggest that science can be democratized by engaging individuals with varying skill levels and motivations with small changes in the information provided to participants.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0224946