Motivations of volunteers in the Transcribe Sheng project: A grounded theory approach

Abstract

ABSTRACTWith an increasing interest in leveraging crowdsourcing in GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) projects, there is a growing trend within the digital humanities field to develop various platforms and tools that outsource the traditionally knowledge‐intensive tasks to the mass volunteers. However, such kind of projects usually entail a greater level of time, effort, and intellectual input from the public. In such case, what motivates volunteers remains little studied and poorly understood. To better understand volunteers' motivations and how they may benefit from their participation, we conducted interviews on volunteers in the Transcribe Sheng project, a crowdsourcing project in digital humanities domain in China. Grounded theory is employed to investigate the motivations from the interview data. The preliminary findings show that volunteers are motivated by a complex framework involving external factors, cognitive value, emotional perception, and task driven factors. Based on the qualitative analysis, this study proposes a preliminary theoretical framework to understand volunteers' motivations, which may also yield practical implications on digital humanity practices.