EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Meeting volunteer expectations — a review of volunteer motivations in citizen science and best practices for their retention through implementation of functional features in CS tools

Johanna Amalia Robinson, David Kocman, Orestis Speyer and Evangelos Gerasopoulos

Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 2021, vol. 64, issue 12, 2089-2113

Abstract: Citizen Science (CS) projects vary greatly. The aims and goals of a CS project determine the type of citizen involvement and the tools to be used, which in most cases also entail information and communication technology (ICT) that facilitates public participation in scientific research. Resource limitations in CS projects often require adopting suboptimal tools, which, however, may come with hidden costs stemming from poor usability and underwhelming functionality, thus reducing volunteers’ motivation. Meeting the volunteers’ expectations by designing or using existing tools with functional features which fulfill and nurture their motivations, will foster long-term participation and contribute to project sustainability. This paper reviews the types of CS projects, volunteer motivation and retention strategies from the literature and classifies them thematically. This is distilled into guidance that can help CS practitioners to design and implement CS tools and plan and manage CS projects, which better serve their scientific and volunteer-related goals.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09640568.2020.1853507 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jenpmg:v:64:y:2021:i:12:p:2089-2113

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CJEP20

DOI: 10.1080/09640568.2020.1853507

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Environmental Planning and Management is currently edited by Dr Neil Powe, Dr Ken Willis and George Bill Page

More articles in Journal of Environmental Planning and Management from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-20
Handle: RePEc:taf:jenpmg:v:64:y:2021:i:12:p:2089-2113