Promoting Crowdsourcing for Urban Research: Cycling Safety Citizen Science in Four Cities
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Department of Geography, University of Victoria, PO Box 1700 STN CSC, Victoria, BC V8W 2Y2, Canada
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School of Geographical Sciences & Urban Planning, Arizona State University, PO Box 875302, Tempe, AZ 85287-5302, USA
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Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF), 171 Nepean Street, Suite 200, Ottawa, ON K2P 0B4, Canada
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Faculty of Health Science, Simon Fraser University, Blusson Hall, Room 11300, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada
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Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Urban Sci. 2017, 1(2), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci1020021
Received: 17 May 2017
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Revised: 17 June 2017
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Accepted: 19 June 2017
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Published: 21 June 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Crowdsourcing Urban Data)
People generate massive volumes of data on the Internet about cities. Researchers may engage these crowds to fill data gaps and better understand and inform planning decisions. Crowdsourced tools for data collection must be supported by outreach; however, researchers typically have limited experience with marketing and promotion. Our goal is to provide guidance on effective promotion strategies. We evaluated promotion efforts for BikeMaps.org, a crowdsourced tool for cycling collisions, near misses, hazards, and thefts. We analyzed website use (sessions) and incidents reported, and how they related to promotion medium (social, traditional news, or in-person), intended audience (cyclists or general), and community context (cycling mode share, cycling facilities, and a survey in the broader community). We compared four Canadian cities, three with active promotion, and one without, over eight months. High-use events were identified in time periods with above average web sessions. We found that promotion was essential for use of the project. Targeting cycling specific audiences resulted in more data submitted, while targeting general audiences resulted in greater age and gender diversity. We encourage researchers to use tools to monitor and adapt to promotion medium, audience, and community context. Strategic promotion may help achieve more diverse representation in crowdsourced data.
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Keywords:
volunteered geographic information (VGI); social media; data informatics; data quality; data intensive science
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MDPI and ACS Style
Ferster, C.; Nelson, T.; Laberee, K.; Vanlaar, W.; Winters, M. Promoting Crowdsourcing for Urban Research: Cycling Safety Citizen Science in Four Cities. Urban Sci. 2017, 1, 21. https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci1020021
AMA Style
Ferster C, Nelson T, Laberee K, Vanlaar W, Winters M. Promoting Crowdsourcing for Urban Research: Cycling Safety Citizen Science in Four Cities. Urban Science. 2017; 1(2):21. https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci1020021
Chicago/Turabian StyleFerster, Colin, Trisalyn Nelson, Karen Laberee, Ward Vanlaar, and Meghan Winters. 2017. "Promoting Crowdsourcing for Urban Research: Cycling Safety Citizen Science in Four Cities" Urban Science 1, no. 2: 21. https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci1020021
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