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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Motivation to engage in crowdsourcing: Towards the synthetic psychological–sociological model

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Abstract This article is aimed at analysis of user participation in web-based crowdsourcing projects in the digital humanities (DH) field, with a focus on what motivates these volunteers.1 The first aim of the article is a critical analysis of models of motivators for involvement offered to date. The analysis is based on a review of DH crowdsourcing literature, as a result of which there is an indication of shortcomings of the psychological data-driven approach that has dominated thus far. The second aim of the article is to offer a new model that synthesizes the psychological-motivation approach with a sociological one. Applying Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Capital, the motivation model created by the psychological self-determination theory (SDT) is supplemented with capital dimensions and specific types of capital. The new model is empirically tested, utilizing specific data collected in the course of a crowdsourcing project, specifically, volunteers’ online survey. The conclusion states that the model synthesized using the psychological and sociological approach preserves the main SDT category scale (intrinsic–extrinsic), at the same time, the sociological capital categories implemented therein permit for making more concrete the psychological scale’s ‘intermediate phase’ (internalized extrinsic motivations) that had been amorphous up to that point, rendering the motivation model more coherent and readily applied.