Sharing heartbeats: Motivations of citizen scientists in times of crises

Abstract

With the rise of COVID-19 cases globally, many countries released digital tools to mitigate the efects of the pandemic. In Germany the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) published the Corona-Data-Donation-App, a virtual citizen science (VCS) project, to establish an early warning system for the prediction of potential COVID-19 hotspots using data from wearable devices. While work on motivation for VCS projects in HCI often presents egoistic motives as prevailing, there is little research on such motives in crises situations. In this paper, we explore the socio-psychological processes and motivations to share personal data during a pandemic. Our fndings indicate that collective motives dominated among app reviews (n=464) and in in-depth interviews (n=10). We contribute implications for future VCS tools in times of crises that highlight the importance of communication, transparency and responsibility.