Nudging citizen scientists: participation, motivation, and learning in energy demand management

The involvement of citizens in research projects led by professional scientists, a phenomenon known as citizen science, is increasingly rising. While advancements in information technology in the past few decades have fostered online participation, motivating participants is still a crucial aspect. With this respect, the phenomenon of nudging, i.e. directing citizens into better behaviors, attracted recent academic, managerial and political attention. With this study we would like to contribute to this stream of research evidencing that providing suggestions is more effective than shockvertising or forcing mechanisms when promoting and motivating citizen scientists towards behavioral changes. The technique of nudging is here experimentally tested in the field of residential energy demand management, where citizens’ decisions can make the difference for social and personal welfare. In this study, we developed a web-based platform that provides citizens feedbacks to suggest the best time window to use appliances at reduced costs and pollutant emissions. The results quantified how much the different feedbacks provided are able to: i) motivate citizens to be involved in citizen science projects; ii) induce people to follow the suggestion provided by the website, and iii) increase people interest towards environmental issues.