This work was presented at HAIDM 2015. The 2015 workshop on Human-Agent Interaction Design and Models was co-organised by SmartSociety.

Abstract: The majority of volunteers participating in citizen science projects perform only a few tasks each before leaving the system. We designed an intervention strategy to reduce disengagement in 16 different citizen science projects. Targeted users who had left the system received emails that directly addressed motivational factors that affect their engagement. Results show that participants receiving the emails were significantly more likely to return to productive activity when compared to a control group.

Keywords: Peer production, crowdsourcing, citizen science, intervention strategies.

Citation: Segal, A., Gal, Y.A.K., Simpson, R.J., Victoria Homsy, V., Hartswood, M., Page, K.R. and Jirotka, M., 2015, May. Improving productivity in citizen science through controlled intervention. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion (pp. 331-337). International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee.

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