Competing or aiming to be average?: Normification as a means of engaging digital volunteers

Engagement, motivation and active contribution by digital volunteers are key requirements for crowdsourcing and citizen science projects. Many systems use competitive elements, for example point scoring and leaderboards, to achieve these ends. However, while competition may motivate some people, it can have a neutral or demotivating effect on others. In this paper we explore theories of personal and social norms and investigate normification as an alternative approach to engagement, to be used alongside or instead of competitive strategies. We provide a systematic review of existing crowdsourcing and citizen science literature and categorise the ways that theories of norms have been incorporated to date. We then present qualitative interview data from a pro-environmental crowdsourcing study, Close the Door, which reveals normalising attitudes in certain participants. We assess how this links with competitive behaviour and participant performance. Based on our findings and analysis of norm theories, we consider the implications for designers wishing to use normification as an engagement strategy in crowdsourcing and citizen science systems

Beyond Behavior Change: Household Retrofitting and ICT

Communications Technologies (ICTs) to reduce household energy consumption has recently focused on two potential strategies: “smart homes ” that rely on sensors and technological innovations to automatically reduce the energy load, and tools that seek to persuade users to change their domestic habits, such as by using eco-feedback devices to raise awareness of the amount of energy used. We propose that there is another approach: support and encouragement of existing best practice within a community to spread it more widely. One such practice is household retrofitting: the installation of domestic environmental technologies (DETs) such as increased insulation, energy efficient boilers, or renewable energy that serve to permanently reduce energy use in a household. We have developed a smartphone application to be used in conjunction with retrofitting open-home events that assists organizers in tracking their event’s impact, whilst also helping users in the decision-making processes that surround retrofitting. This paper provides an overview of the app development process and initial results from in-the-wild testing, whilst also identifying potential areas for future research. Index Terms—Retrofitting, smartphones, community learning, applications. I

Using Crowdsourcing to Support Pro-Environmental Community Activism

Community activist groups typically rely on core groups of highly motivated members. In this paper we consider how crowdsourcing strategies can be used to supplement the activities of pro-environmental community activists, thus increasing the scalability of their campaigns. We focus on mobile data collection applications and strategies that can be used to engage casual participants in pro-environmental data collection. We report the results of a study that used both quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the impact of different motivational factors and strategies, including both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. The study compared and provides empirical evidence for the effectiveness of two extrinsic motivation strategies, pointification – a subset of gamification – and financial incentives. Prior environmental interest is also assessed as an intrinsic motivation factor. In contrast to previous HCI research on pro-environmental technology, much of which has focused on individual behavior change, this paper offers new insights and recommendations on the design of systems that target groups and communities. Author Keywords Community activism; sustainability; participator