Unleashing the Power of the Zooniverse: The 2021 Survey of Volunteers

Abstract

We present the results of a large-scale participant survey administered to volunteers on the Zooniverse citizen science platform. Nearly three million people have user accounts on zooniverse.org, making it one of the largest platforms for online citizen science. The survey was launched to learn more about the background of volunteers and consisted of four sections: demographics, contribution and engagement, motivations and values, and community perspectives. We received 6,030 valid responses which are reported in the paper. After reporting the results of the survey, we contextualized them through comparisons and contrasts with other citizen science initiatives and the previous Zooniverse survey conducted in 2014.

Keywords: Participant Survey, Citizen Science, Zooniverse, Demographics

JEL Classification: L31, C83