What motivates researchers to participate in citizen science projects?

Abstract

There have been huge investments being made in direction of citizen science projects to enhance the engagement between science and society. To achieve goals and for the success of citizen science projects, a crucial element is getting more researchers to participate in citizens science projects. Besides harmoniously sustaining the participation of existing researchers who are already engaged in citizen science. While doing this, we identified two primary knowledge gaps: one, there is limited and insufficient research that articulates the perspectives of researchers to understand what motivates them to participate in citizen science. Two, even the limited available literature, is published by the researchers who are involved in citizen science projects themselves. That has more chance of publication bias and lacks critical scrutiny. For instance, these literatures give the impression that participation from researchers is because of their enthusiasm to enhance scientific awareness in society and to drive citizen’s positive attitudes towards science. Despite there have been projects where the participation from the researchers have not been particularly great.Q-method was identified as the suitable method to identify the perspective of the researchers, as it has been successfully applied in a range of disciplines from political science to environmental science. This method uses Q-factors analysis, that makes the researchers the variables of analysis. Stephenson (1953) argued, if there existed significant clusters of correlations in the participant’s profile, these clusters could be factorised and described as shared perspective and individuals could be measured in relevance to them. Overall, seven distinct perspectives of the researchers related to participation in citizen science are identified. These perspectives are divided into three broad groups based on their inclination to participate in citizen science projects. It is interesting that these groups exactly correlate with the experience of the researchers, that shows that perspectives are in association with on-ground thoughts. Group 1: represents the perspective of researchers who have intrinsic motivation to participate in citizen science and these researchers are experienced in citizens science. These perspectives are revealed by perspective 1 & perspective 2. These researchers are expected to participate on their own. Group 2: represents perspective of researchers who have no interested or inclination to participate in citizen science projects, as they consider it not suitable method answer their research question. These researchers have no experience in citizen science. These perspectives are revealed by perspective 4 & perspective 5. Group 3: these researchers are inclined to participate in citizen science, but some inhibitors in citizen science practise are preventing them to participate in citizen science. Perspectives of this group are revealed by perspective 3, perspective 6 & perspective 7. The policy recommendation is suggested to citizen science association, institutions framing ethical policy and to researchers. This research contributes in three different ways, one it provides critical scrutiny of the literature published on perspectives of researchers, by comparing with what is discussed in the literature with on-ground thoughts of researchers. Two, this research identifies latent perspectives that have not been disused in the field of citizen science. Three, the research identifies controversies in the perspectives of researchers. However, research has limitations due to choices made during the research. One, no concrete conclusions, could be made specific to any scientific discipline or level of engagement between high-level involvement actors, due to the broad scope of the research. Two, research focuses on participation between high-level involvement actors. Three, the use of free sorting of statements to reduce the time for answering the survey. For future research, two controversies in the perspectives of researchers are identified that can be scope for entire new research in the field of citizen science. One, compensation of citizens in citizen science projects. Two, different model to increase scientific literacy are identified between perspective 6, perspective 7 and perspective 1.