Incentive Mechanisms for Participatory Sensing: Survey and Research Challenges

Participatory sensing is a powerful paradigm which takes advantage of smartphones to collect and analyze data beyond the scale of what was previously possible. Given that participatory sensing systems rely completely on the users' willingness to submit up-to-date and accurate information, it is paramount to effectively incentivize users' active and reliable participation. In this paper, we survey existing literature on incentive mechanisms for participatory sensing systems. In particular, we present a taxonomy of existing incentive mechanisms for participatory sensing systems, which are subsequently discussed in depth by comparing and contrasting different approaches. Finally, we discuss an agenda of open research challenges in incentivizing users in participatory sensing.Comment: Updated version, 4/25/201

Using Visual Prompts and a Raffle to Increase Recycling on Campus

Landfills pose a risk to the current level of human development and population growth. Leachates have the potential of polluting the ground water which can cause severe birth defects and decrease the population. When municipal solid waste breaks down it produces methane gas creating debilitating health problems that are fatal. More attention will have to be directed towards sustainable growth by reducing the amount of recyclable materials being discarded as waste. Part of the public affairs mission of Missouri State University is to engage in pro-social behavior and incorporate the student body and community whenever possible. One way of modeling pro-social behavior is to increase student recycling behavior and decrease contamination in recycling plants. This demonstrates an investment in the community and provides a good model for the students. To this end, the university has invested significantly in recycling behavior by purchasing high-quality bins and placing them throughout most of the buildings on campus. In order to increase student recycling of plastic bottles and reduce contamination of the recycling bins with trash items, the current study used prompts and a raffle to encourage recycling of plastic bottles and accurate placement of items in the bins in Hill Hall and Siceluff Hall. The results suggest that the interventions may have had a modest effect. Obstacles and limitations are discussed before describing how future research may continue productively

Gamifying a Map-based Feedback Service to Support Youth Participation in City Improvement

In recent years, youth has been recognized as an indispensable stakeholder of city environment. On the one hand, young citizens who have intentions to contribute their community should be given an opportunity to express ideas. On the other hand, it is necessary for city agencies to listen to the needs from young generation to create a more livable and friendly city environment. Since location is considered as an essential attribute of human activities, local knowledge of residents always has a direct relation with spatial data. Thus, utilizing Geography Information System (GIS) has been developed to help public to participant in improving city environment, that is, Public Participation Geography Information System (PPGIS). However, younger people are thought to be less attracted by traditional political engagement, and annoyed with authoritative and tough tone. Thus, gamification as an innovative and increase popular trend has been implemented in a variety of youth-related applications and projects. Gamification is proposed to fulfill the desires of young people in the aspects of achievement, social, and immersion. The effects of gamification individuals with different player types and preferences of games to some degree. The research in thesis is conducted in connection with All-Youth project based in Finland, which is a multidisciplinary research project to enhance the connection with young people and their communities. This thesis focuses on applying gamification into digital public feedback service to motivate and sustain youth participation. Firstly, the discussion of related work includes status of youth participation in city planning, digital map technology used in public participation, and definition, content, and benefits of gamification. Secondly, three map-based tools for different purpose of public participation are studied to evaluate their usability and aesthetic quality. Thirdly, a gamified feedback service is prototyped based on initial user research and analysis. Finally, the effects of the gamified prototype are evaluated in user testing with the comparison to a control prototype without gamification. The results suggest that gamification can have positive effects on attractiveness and hedonic system qualities, while it may also influence on pragmatic quality. Overall, the research of this thesis can be considered as a successful attempt to gamify the public map-based platform which could have influence on youth engagement

Quality of Information in Mobile Crowdsensing: Survey and Research Challenges

Smartphones have become the most pervasive devices in people's lives, and are clearly transforming the way we live and perceive technology. Today's smartphones benefit from almost ubiquitous Internet connectivity and come equipped with a plethora of inexpensive yet powerful embedded sensors, such as accelerometer, gyroscope, microphone, and camera. This unique combination has enabled revolutionary applications based on the mobile crowdsensing paradigm, such as real-time road traffic monitoring, air and noise pollution, crime control, and wildlife monitoring, just to name a few. Differently from prior sensing paradigms, humans are now the primary actors of the sensing process, since they become fundamental in retrieving reliable and up-to-date information about the event being monitored. As humans may behave unreliably or maliciously, assessing and guaranteeing Quality of Information (QoI) becomes more important than ever. In this paper, we provide a new framework for defining and enforcing the QoI in mobile crowdsensing, and analyze in depth the current state-of-the-art on the topic. We also outline novel research challenges, along with possible directions of future work.Comment: To appear in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN

Wearable Computing for Health and Fitness: Exploring the Relationship between Data and Human Behaviour

Health and fitness wearable technology has recently advanced, making it easier for an individual to monitor their behaviours. Previously self generated data interacts with the user to motivate positive behaviour change, but issues arise when relating this to long term mention of wearable devices. Previous studies within this area are discussed. We also consider a new approach where data is used to support instead of motivate, through monitoring and logging to encourage reflection. Based on issues highlighted, we then make recommendations on the direction in which future work could be most beneficial

Design of Automatic User Identification Framework in Crowdsourcing Requirements Engineering : User Mapping and System Architecture

The requirement elicitation is the initial stage of requirement engineering where information collected from users. The process are significantly determined by the quality and quantity of information collected. The crowdsourcing is a method of information gathering from many users. The number and variety of users in the crowdsourcing are both advantages and challenges in the elicitation process. This study purposes a framework for user identification that consists of user mapping and architecture system. The identification process consists of 8 main states, start with defining context, user target and scope determination, data source determination, user data collection, data pre-processing, feature selection, data classification and user identification. The results of this study is an initial state for development of an automated tool for user identification to elicit requirement through crowdsourcing. By the framework can be generated the user classification, which can be used to apply the appropriate method for gathering information in elicitation process

Playing With Science: Exploring How Game Activity Motivates Users Participation on an Online Citizen Science Platform

Purpose – This paper examines intrinsic forms of motivation and particular incidents of play, socialisation, fun and amusement on an online crowdsourced citizen science platform. The paper also investigates gamised activity (Greenhill et al., 2014) as a form of intrinsic motivation adding a sense of play to work and tasks (Xu et al., 2012). These concepts are explored through close scrutiny of the online citizen science platform Zooniverse.org. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative techniques with an interpretivist approach are used to analyse online content found within citizen science platforms, related forums and social media by examining incidents of play, socialisation, fun and amusement to investigate how these aspects are applied as a form of user motivation. Findings – We find that when users classify crowdsourced tasks voluntarily it does not matter how users are classifying as long as it is accurately. However, what does matter is why they are doing it particularly because of the complex processes that build relationships between users and the platform. We present a conceptual model to enable deeper understandings of how forms of social interaction and play are motivating users contributing to citizen science projects to participate in the online processes. Practical implications – The findings of this paper provide practical implications for how citizen science, and also other crowdsourcing platforms, can engage with notions of play and gamification to motivate participation. Originality/value – Using detailed examples of online content, we reveal how participants of the Zooniverse.org demonstrate aspects of ‘gamised’ behaviour. We argue that the exploration of gaming as well as play provides evidence that contributing to citizen science projects can be both utilitarian and hedonic

Collecting data for indoor mapping of the university of Münster via a location based game

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.Nowadays the collection of spatial indoor mapping data presents a big challenge for both science and industry because there is not a cost-effective method yet for it as it is for outdoor mapping. Research is pointing out to crowdsourcing as means of address the challenge of massive indoor mapping based on the principle that people should be the main source of information. Therefore the crowd needs a tool that lets them do indoor mapping tasks as well as means of motivation. This project has as its main goal to study the impact of gamification as a motivation factor by implementing and evaluating it in a mobile application aimed for acquisition of indoor spatial data of the buildings of the University of Münster. For this purpose an already existing mobile application was modified to incorporate game elements, thus creating a new version of the app. Three game mechanics were added for the new version of the app: score, leaderboard and conquest map. Once both apps were ready (gamified and original non-gamified) an evaluation was carried out with 28 participants (14 male and 14 female) to assess the impact of game mechanics when users are performing indoor mapping tasks. As a result we may say that the most of participants preferred the gamified application over the non-gamified one, the study also shows that actually men favored the gamified app more than women