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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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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Lyons, Elizabeth, Zhang, Laurina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6871885/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31751358
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0224946
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author Lyons, Elizabeth
Zhang, Laurina
author_facet Lyons, Elizabeth
Zhang, Laurina
author_sort Lyons, Elizabeth
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-68718852019-12-08 Trade-offs in motivating volunteer effort: Experimental evidence on voluntary contributions to science Lyons, Elizabeth Zhang, Laurina PLoS One Research Article 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. Public Library of Science 2019-11-21 /pmc/articles/PMC6871885/ /pubmed/31751358 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0224946 Text en © 2019 Lyons, Zhang http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Lyons, Elizabeth
Zhang, Laurina
Trade-offs in motivating volunteer effort: Experimental evidence on voluntary contributions to science
title Trade-offs in motivating volunteer effort: Experimental evidence on voluntary contributions to science
title_full Trade-offs in motivating volunteer effort: Experimental evidence on voluntary contributions to science
title_fullStr Trade-offs in motivating volunteer effort: Experimental evidence on voluntary contributions to science
title_full_unstemmed Trade-offs in motivating volunteer effort: Experimental evidence on voluntary contributions to science
title_short Trade-offs in motivating volunteer effort: Experimental evidence on voluntary contributions to science
title_sort trade-offs in motivating volunteer effort: experimental evidence on voluntary contributions to science
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6871885/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31751358
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0224946
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