Facilitating Citizen Science through Gamification

Gamification is the practice of using game elements to change the experience of nongame contexts. It presents a potentially powerful new approach to motivate volunteers and recruit new contributors to citizen science—the phenomenon of engaging members of the public in the collection and analysis of data in scientific projects. This research included a thorough literature review of current gamification and citizen science research and presented a pilot information systems/design science project exploring the efficacy of gamification in the citizen science platform NL Nature.