D 5.6 - Initial analysis and guidelines of incentives and motivation within citizen science

This deliverable sets out the initial analyses conducted by the ACTION team regarding the use and effectiveness of incentives, as well as distinct motivations and motivational factors within pollution citizen science. We analysed the motivations associated with participation in two pollution-related projects - one focused on light pollution and another on the impact of agricultural pollution on insect numbers. Additionally, we analysed the impact of financial incentives for incentivising participation in citizen science tasks, finding that while financial incentives can motivate participation, they are not associated with significant interest in tasks and may encourage low effort submissions and malicious behaviours. We note that these findings have significance for projects which may seek to combine paid crowdsourcing effort with volunteer generated data. We conclude with a set of preliminary guidelines for motivating and incentivising participation in citizen science, with a particular focus on pollution-related research.