Experimental Design Details
In order to test why certain types of people have a desire to contribute to science, and whether this desire can be increased through certain non-monetary incentives and research task modifications, we will run a natural field experiment on Zooniverse, the largest voluntary crowd science platform in the world. Specifically, we will post four actual scientific research projects on the Zooniverse platform for platform participants to assist with. The projects will all have the same scientific content but will vary in how they are presented to participants. These variations are described in detail below. The project will be to classify photos of rangelands taken in Northern Kenya as part of a large rangeland condition crowd-sourcing effort.
Participants will not be aware that these projects are being used to investigate questions related to the economics of science in addition to the publicly stated objective of the projects. To eliminate concerns about participant selection into a particular project based on an experimental treatment, and to ensure participants are not aware that there are several versions of the same project (i.e., different experimental treatments), each version will be emailed to a randomly selected subset of Zooniverse participants who will be invited to contribute to the projects. Zooniverse will send these emails on our behalf to their population of users. The total population of users who will receive an email is 31,000. Each participant will receive one version of the project. We will control for participant characteristics by administering a short survey on participant age, gender, employment status, educational level, and career goals before they contribute to the project.
Treatment Groups:
Scientific Recognition Treatment: One explanation for voluntary contributions to science is that that people want to be recognized in the scientific community. For instance, in a survey of Zooniverse contributors, one contributor wrote he/she contributes because “…[I] selfishly hop[e] that I will be the one to discover something completely novel” suggesting a desire to not just contribute but be recognized as a scientific discoverer. In the same survey, over half of contributors reported that they would contribute more to the platform if they had more communication with scientists. Existing evidence on the importance of scientific recognition for motivating discovery is weak, in part because of difficulties associated with people being forthcoming about these types of desires. By testing this in a field setting where contributors do not have to state the desire for scientific recognition, but rather respond to the opportunity to receive it, this treatment group will overcome the difficulty associated with honest self-reporting. To test this, one project page will offer participants the chance to be acknowledged in an academic presentation on results of the research project. The page will specify that participants who make substantial contributions to the project will be mentioned in a conference presentation. This recognition will indicate to the participants and to the broader scientific community that participants have contributed to science.
Social Reputational Treatment: A second explanation for voluntary contributions to science is that people derive social rewards for doing so either within the Zooniverse community or in their broader social networks (e.g., Rege & Telle, 2004; Wasko & Faraj, 2005). To test whether social rewards increase people’s willingness to contribute to science, one project page will have all contributors’ stats (i.e. number of contributions and amount of time spent contributing) posted on the page beside their usernames. In addition, users will be told that they can provide a link to the project page from their Facebook account to make the social rewards associated with contributing more salient. Currently, some project pages on Zooniverse post user stats but not all do. Both theoretically, and practically for Zooniverse, understanding whether this has positive or negative implications for voluntary contributions is important.
Scientific Framing Treatment: A third explanation for voluntary contributions to science that we will test in this project is that people may derive utility from the belief that they are contributing to a welfare enhancing public good (e.g., Bergstrom et al, 1986; Stiglitz, 1999). This is separate from receiving recognition within the scientific community as this will test whether people are motivated by the science itself rather than the potential to be recognized for scientific discovery or for contributions to science. To test this explanation, the scientific contribution of the research project will be emphasized on one of the project pages.
Control Group:
The control group will be sent a version of the project with a basic description and with none of the treatments described above.
References:
Bergstrom, Theodore, Lawrence Blume, and Hal Varian. "On the private provision of public goods." Journal of Public Economics 29.1 (1986): 25-49.
Rege, Mari, and Kjetil Telle. "The impact of social approval and framing on cooperation in public good situations." Journal of Public Economics 88.7 (2004): 1625-1644.
Stiglitz, Joseph E. "Knowledge as a global public good." Global public goods 1.9 (1999): 308-326.
Wasko, Molly McLure, and Samer Faraj. "Why should I share? Examining social capital and knowledge contribution in electronic networks of practice." MIS quarterly (2005): 35-57.