Symbolic incentives and the recruitment of volunteers for citizen science projects
Symbolic incentives and the recruitment of volunteers for citizen science projects
The provision of activities with external benefits that rely on voluntary contributions may often fall below societal needs. In this article, we focus on such contributions to a citizen science project (the World Community Grid) in which members of the general public are asked to offer unused computer power to advance cutting-edge scientific research. We investigate the role played by symbolic awards in stimulating existing contributors to recruit new contributors for this project. The recruitment campaign we study introduces badges for referrals (visible on each user’s public profile page) varying, across randomized treatment groups, the threshold of successful referrals needed to receive these badges. We find that these symbolic incentives are effective in boosting referrals, and more so when the minimum threshold for achieving symbolic awards is higher. However, the overall effect of the incentives is quite modest, highlighting the challenges of running referral campaigns for the recruitment of volunteers.
C93, D64, H41
923-940
Cicognani, Simona
bf37b0d9-4ffc-4385-aef8-5a935746debc
Stein, Sebastian
cb2325e7-5e63-475e-8a69-9db2dfbdb00b
Tonin, Mirco
fcd223b6-577c-4116-a041-b30f29df42d1
Vlassopoulos, Michael
2d557227-958c-4855-92a8-b74b398f95c7
3 August 2023
Cicognani, Simona
bf37b0d9-4ffc-4385-aef8-5a935746debc
Stein, Sebastian
cb2325e7-5e63-475e-8a69-9db2dfbdb00b
Tonin, Mirco
fcd223b6-577c-4116-a041-b30f29df42d1
Vlassopoulos, Michael
2d557227-958c-4855-92a8-b74b398f95c7
Cicognani, Simona, Stein, Sebastian, Tonin, Mirco and Vlassopoulos, Michael
(2023)
Symbolic incentives and the recruitment of volunteers for citizen science projects.
Oxford Economic Papers, 75 (4), , [gpad031].
(doi:10.1093/oep/gpad031).
Abstract
The provision of activities with external benefits that rely on voluntary contributions may often fall below societal needs. In this article, we focus on such contributions to a citizen science project (the World Community Grid) in which members of the general public are asked to offer unused computer power to advance cutting-edge scientific research. We investigate the role played by symbolic awards in stimulating existing contributors to recruit new contributors for this project. The recruitment campaign we study introduces badges for referrals (visible on each user’s public profile page) varying, across randomized treatment groups, the threshold of successful referrals needed to receive these badges. We find that these symbolic incentives are effective in boosting referrals, and more so when the minimum threshold for achieving symbolic awards is higher. However, the overall effect of the incentives is quite modest, highlighting the challenges of running referral campaigns for the recruitment of volunteers.
Text
Symbolic_Incentives_OEP
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 18 July 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 3 August 2023
Published date: 3 August 2023
Additional Information:
Funding: Sebastian Stein is supported by an EPSRC Turing AI Acceleration Fellowship (EP/V022067/1).
Funding Information:
Sebastian Stein is supported by an EPSRC Turing AI Acceleration Fellowship (EP/V022067/1).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
C93, D64, H41
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 481391
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/481391
ISSN: 0030-7653
PURE UUID: 452fb4f7-e978-43fe-b904-aa993d22e76b
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Date deposited: 25 Aug 2023 16:31
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 03:09
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Contributors
Author:
Simona Cicognani
Author:
Sebastian Stein
Author:
Mirco Tonin
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