What topic best appeals to citizen scientists?

What is it about?

Citizen science projects often email potential volunteers to invite them to join the project. Prior research has identified different motivations for participation in a project; this study investigated which motive is most effective to appeal to in an introductory email. We carried out a controlled experiment in which messages with four different appeals were sent to separate cohorts of potential participants (N=36,513 in total) inviting participation in a new Zooniverse project, Gravity Spy. About 2,000 people clicked on the link in the emails of whom about 800 went on to contribute to Gravity Spy. Messages that appealed to Learning about Science and Contributing to Science attracted significantly more click-throughs than the one that appealed to Helping Scientists. However, the fraction of visitors who went on to contribute was significantly higher for Helping Scientists than for all three other cohorts. The proportion of users who sustain their contribution was highest for Contributing to Science and Helping Scientists, followed by Joining a Community, with Learning about Science at the bottom, though these differences were not statistically significant due to the high variation in the level of contribution among volunteers. Similarly, there was no statistically significant difference in the average number of contributions. However, the total number of contributions received from the Contributing to Science cohort was greater than expected by chance, while the total for Joining a Community was lower.

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Photo by Kaylyn Mok on Unsplash

Photo by Kaylyn Mok on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Success of citizen-science projects is heavily dependent on attracting participation of citizen scientist volunteers and the first point of contact is often an email message introducing the project and appealing for help. This study shows that an appeal to Contributing to Science seemed to work best overall. A second finding is that different motives were more effective at different stages of volunteer participation, suggesting that projects might benefit by providing different messages at different points: one set of motives to get a prospective volunteer to visit the site (e.g., learning about science), another to convince them to try it (e.g., helping scientists), and third to promote sustained contribution (e.g., contributing to science). An open question is if different volunteers have different motivations, meaning that messages should be personally tailored.

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