Perception Vs. Reality: A story of motivating Citizen Scientists in the Kathmandu Valley

Authors: Anurag Gyawali1, Eliyah Moktan1, Anusha Pandey1 ,Jeffrey Colin Davids2, 3

1 SmartPhones4Water-Nepal (S4W-Nepal), Thasikhel, Lalitpur

2 Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands

3 SmartPhones4Water-USA, Chico, California, USA

Abstract:

Citizen Science is the process of involving general public or citizens in scientific processes, often for or with the help of researchers. Several projects have recognized and valued the benefits of citizen science in any research, yet what motivates these citizen scientists to participate in a citizen science driven project remains mostly unknown or poorly understood. Our previous work analyzed various intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for citizens in Nepal to participate in citizen science (CS) driven projects like Smartphones4Water (S4W). We performed surveys and interviews with over 200 current or potential CS to evaluate CS motivations using Q methodology. Finally, we identified seven factors which were expected to be helpful in motivating people. These factors varied with personal characteristics, like, age, background, personal interest, etc. This paper extends this research to evaluate dishonesty or social un-reliability, if any, exists in the survey research. Based on the performance of more than 300 current CS for 2017, we reevaluated CS motivational factors based on the same social and personal characteristics. Essentially, our goal was to  compare what we thought would motivate CS and what actually motivated them.

Keywords: citizen motivations, social disreliability, dishonesty