"Because Science is Awesome": Studying Participation in a Citizen Science Game

In this paper, we examine the motivations for participation in Eye-Wire, a Web-based gamified citizen science platform. Our study is based on a large-scale survey to which we conducted a qualitative analysis of survey responses in order to understand what drives individuals to participate. Based on our analysis, we derive 18 motivations related to participation, and group them into 4 motivational themes related to engagement. We contextualize our findings against the broader literature on online communities, and compare our findings with other citizen science platforms, in order to understand the implications of gamification within the context of citizen science.