What Drives Citizens to Engage in ICT-Enabled Citizen Science?

Abstract

In order for citizen science initiatives to pan out well, various actors need to be willing to engage in citizen science activities. The particular interest in this chapter lies with the citizens and their motivations to participate in ICT-enabled citizen science since, arguably, without citizen participation, there is no citizen science activity. The authors examine in detail what determines citizens' interest to share their weather-related data collected with Personal Weather Stations via online amateur networks and how these citizen activities could be up-scaled to address prevalent hydro-meteorological data gaps. A decision making theory is used to guide empirical research in three European countries. The results indicate no regional differences between the main drivers and incentives and raise the question whether weather observation is still a male-dominated activity in the digital age which would have implications for upscaling this citizen science initiative.