Sharing Heartbeats: Motivations of Citizen Scientists in Times of Crises

Title of the Paper

Shared Heartbeat: Motivations of Citizen Scientists in Times of Crisis

Bibliographic Information

• Subject Area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Citizen Science, Crisis Informatics
• Keywords: Citizen Science, Wearable Devices, Motivation, Social Computing, COVID-19, Pandemic

Research Background and Problem

• Identified Issues and Challenges:

  1. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Germany developed a virtual citizen science (VCS) application called "Corona-Data-Donation-App (CDA)" to detect potential pandemic hotspots using voluntarily donated health data (e.g., wearable device data).
  2. Current research on motivations for participating in VCS primarily focuses on benefit-driven motivations, with limited exploration of these motivations in crisis contexts.
  3. Understanding the social-psychological mechanisms behind individuals' willingness to share personal data during crises remains an underexplored area.

• Significance:

  1. The CDA project aims to assist governments and relevant organizations in predicting pandemic developments, which is crucial for public health management.
  2. Since the project's data relies on voluntary contributions from users, studying incentive mechanisms can enhance users' willingness for long-term participation and improve data quality.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  1. Combining citizen science with human-computer interaction to explore how to promote long-term user participation in VCS projects.
  2. Long-term user experience studies in the field of crisis informatics, particularly in pandemic contexts, are rare.

Solution

Methodology

1. Research Subjects:
   • Online user reviews of CDA and in-depth interviews with 10 actual users.
2. Data Collection and Analysis:
   • Collected 10,202 user reviews from App Store and Google Play, and coded 464 reviews for analysis.
   • Recruited 10 users for structured interviews, focusing on motivations, experiences (e.g., installation issues and usage frequency), and perceptions related to data.
3. Research Framework:
   • Conducted qualitative analysis to reveal users' "participation lifecycle," including themes such as motivation, emotional responses, and persistence.

Innovations

1. Applied social-psychological theories (e.g., Batson and Klanderman's motivation theories) to analyze citizen science projects in the context of the pandemic.
2. Combined user reviews and in-depth interviews for a comprehensive analysis of user experience and motivations.
3. Proposed an integrated user participation lifecycle model, explaining how to design VCS tools in pandemic contexts to meet user needs and support long-term participation.

Research Findings

Specific Results

1. User Participation Motivations:

   • Collective motivations (contributing to societal well-being) dominated, with some users mentioning support for scientific research.
   • Users demonstrated high trust in CDA due to its release by Germany's public health organization, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).
   • Although some users expressed caution regarding personal data privacy, the need to serve societal interests outweighed these concerns.

2. User Experience and Emotional Responses:

   • Users felt proud to participate in pandemic response efforts and exhibited a spirit of collaboration.
   • Certain technical issues (e.g., device incompatibility) and concerns about data transparency led to frustration and disappointment.

3. User Persistence:

   • Despite technical challenges, many users continued participating, hoping for the project's success.
   • Users actively helped each other solve problems through online reviews, demonstrating high patience and commitment to the project.

4. Differentiation: The Role of Emotion and Motivation in VCS:

   • In crisis contexts like the pandemic, participants' initial motivations were typically strong, with collective motivations dominating throughout the usage lifecycle.

Advantages

1. The CDA project successfully guided large-scale user participation by combining collective motivations with the urgency of the crisis context.
2. Alternative motivational designs (e.g., social recognition and community support) can further enhance long-term user engagement with technological tools and systems.

Experiments and Evaluation

1. Data analysis revealed that user reviews were concentrated in the project's early stages, indicating that CDA's publicity and government support played a role in attracting users.
2. Interviews supplemented review analysis results, uncovering deeper motivations such as concerns about data privacy and the lack of feedback on analysis results from CDA.

Limitations and Future Directions

• Limitations:

  • Reviews were primarily focused on expressing extreme emotions (either highly positive or highly negative).
  • The small sample size of in-depth interviews may not fully represent the overall user profile.
  • The specific scientific outcomes of CDA may not be significant, limiting its broader applicability.

• Future Directions:

  1. Design VCS tools for other crisis contexts (e.g., natural disasters, large-scale disease outbreaks).
  2. Develop more transparent and user-friendly data feedback mechanisms.
  3. Explore strategies to incentivize long-term user participation in non-crisis VCS contexts.

Conclusion

This paper reveals the motivations and experiences of users participating in virtual citizen science projects during the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing the dominant role of collective motivations and users' persistence in the face of technical challenges. Practical design guidelines for VCS projects in crisis contexts are proposed, such as improving transparency and strengthening user mutual support mechanisms. These findings not only contribute to understanding user behavior in crisis contexts but also provide valuable insights for future design efforts.