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Background. Crowdsourcing, the process of shifting individual tasks to a large group, may enhance human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing interventions. We conducted a noninferiority, randomized controlled trial to compare first-time HIV testing rates among men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender individuals who received a crowdsourced or a health marketing HIV test promotion video. Methods. Seven hundred twenty-one MSM and transgender participants (≥ 16 years old, never before tested for HIV) were recruited through 3 Chinese MSM Web portals and randomly assigned to 1 of 2 videos. The crowdsourced video was developed using an open contest and formal transparent judging while the evidence-based health marketing video was designed by experts. Study objectives were to measure HIV test uptake within 3 weeks of watching either HIV test promotion video and cost per new HIV test and diagnosis. Results. Overall, 624 of 721 (87%) participants from 31 provinces in 217 Chinese cities completed the study. HIV test uptake was similar between the crowdsourced arm (37% [114/307]) and the health marketing arm (35% [111/317]). The estimated difference between the interventions was 2.1% (95% confidence interval, −5.4% to 9.7%). Among those tested, 31% (69/225) reported a new HIV diagnosis. The crowdsourced intervention cost substantially less than the health marketing intervention per first-time HIV test (US$131 vs US$238 per person) and per new HIV diagnosis (US$415 vs US$799 per person). Conclusions. Our nationwide study demonstrates that crowdsourcing may be an effective tool for improving HIV testing messaging campaigns and could increase community engagement in health campaigns. Clinical Trials Registration. NCT02248558.

Crowdfunding has gained traction as a mechanism to raise resources for entrepreneurial and artistic projects, yet there is little systematic evidence on the potential of crowdfunding for scientific research. We first briefly review prior research on crowdfunding and give an overview of dedicated platforms for crowdfunding research. We then analyze data from over 700 campaigns on the largest dedicated platform, Experiment.com. Our descriptive analysis provides insights regarding the creators seeking funding, the projects they are seeking funding for, and the campaigns themselves. We then examine how these characteristics relate to fundraising success. The findings highlight important differences between crowdfunding and traditional funding mechanisms for research, including high use by students and other junior investigators but also relatively small project size. Students and junior investigators are more likely to succeed than senior scientists, and women have higher success rates than men. Conventional signals of quality-including scientists' prior publications-have little relationship with funding success, suggesting that the crowd may apply different decision criteria than traditional funding agencies. Our results highlight significant opportunities for crowdfunding in the context of science while also pointing towards unique challenges. We relate our findings to research on the economics of science and on crowdfunding, and we discuss connections with other emerging mechanisms to involve the public in scientific research.

This study explores whether an oath to honesty can reduce both shirking and lying among crowd-sourced internet workers. Using a classic coin-flip experiment, we first confirm that a substantial majority of Mechanical Turk workers both shirk and lie when reporting the number of heads flipped. We then demonstrate that lying can be reduced by first asking each worker to swear voluntarily on his or her honor to tell the truth in subsequent economic decisions. Even in this online, purely anonymous environment, the oath significantly reduced the percent of subjects telling “big” lies (by roughly 27%), but did not affect shirking. We also explore whether a truth-telling oath can be used as a screening device if implemented after decisions have been made. Conditional on flipping response, MTurk shirkers and workers who lied were significantly less likely to agree to an ex-post honesty oath. Our results suggest oaths may help elicit more truthful behavior, even in online crowd-sourced environments.

Current transportation management systems rely on physical sensors that use traffic volume and queue-lengths. These physical sensors incur significant capital and maintenance costs. The ubiquity of mobile devices has made possible access to accurate and cheap traffic delay data. However, current traffic signal control algorithms do not accommodate the use of such data. In this paper, we propose a novel parsimonious model to utilize real-time crowdsourced delay data for traffic signal management. We demonstrate the versatility and effectiveness of the data and the proposed model on seven different intersections across three cities and two countries. This signal system provides an opportunity to leapfrog from physical sensors to low-cost, reliable crowdsourced data.

Neighbours have organised to support vulnerable people; businesses and national governments have stepped up to provide support for those who need it and strengthen social security and health services. People living in poor, overcrowded, urban areas are especially vulnerable; many do not have basic sanitation, could not self-isolate, and have no paid sick leave or social security. In response to the threat, WHO has launched the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, which has raised more than US$70 million, and some regional organisations have taken strong proactive action, sharing information and receiving donations of testing kits and medical supplies.

Background Use of online crowdfunding to mitigate health-related cost burden is common in the US, but its usage among candidates for metabolic and bariatric surgery (MBS) is unknown. We aimed to identify GoFundMe campaigns fundraising for MBS and characterize sources of financial strain. We also aimed to determine factors associated with successful crowdfunding. Methods We searched GoFundMe for campaigns fundraising for MBS. Data items were extracted by two investigators with disagreements resolved by a third. We assessed associations between these data items and category of money raised using ordered logistic regression. Results We identified 539 campaigns, of which 33.6% were raising funds for sleeve gastrectomy, 24.1% for Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, and 2.0% for biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch. Most campaigns were created by the patient (73.1%) who had health insurance (53.4%) and at least one obesity-associated disease (56.8%). Over half (53.6%) sought funds for a direct medical expense and 35.1% sought funds for a non-medical expense, which included lost wages (15.6%), food (10.8%), transportation (10.2%), childcare (7.1%), and/or housing (5.8%). The median requested was $8000 (IQR 10,440) and the median raised was $860 (IQR 3173). The majority (63.1%) of campaigns earned less than 25% of their requested amount. Campaigns that shared mental health-related disease (aOR 0.55, 95% CI 0.32–0.95) and non-surgical attempts to lose weight (aOR 0.59, 95% CI 0.37–0.94) had lower odds of raising a higher category of money compared to campaigns not disclosing these details. Conclusions Patients pursuing MBS in the US use online crowdfunding to subsidize both medical and non-medical expenses, but the majority of campaigns are unsuccessful. Our study highlights unmet financial need among MBS candidates.

Seemingly similar individuals often experience drastically different success trajectories, with some repeatedly failing and others consistently succeeding. One explanation is preexisting variability along unobserved fitness dimensions that is revealed gradually through differential achievement. Alternatively, positive feedback operating on arbitrary initial advantages may increasingly set apart winners from losers, producing runaway inequality. To identify social feedback in human reward systems, we conducted randomized experiments by intervening in live social environments across the domains of funding, status, endorsement, and reputation. In each system we consistently found that early success bestowed upon arbitrarily selected recipients produced significant improvements in subsequent rates of success compared with the control group of nonrecipients. However, success exhibited decreasing marginal returns, with larger initial advantages failing to produce much further differentiation. These findings suggest a lesser degree of vulnerability of reward systems to incidental or fabricated advantages and a more modest role for cumulative advantage in the explanation of social inequality than previously thought.

As the number of COVID-19 cases increased precipitously in the United States, policy makers and health officials marshalled their pandemic responses. As the economic impacts multiplied, anecdotal reports noted the increased use of web-based crowdfunding to defray these costs. We examined the web-based crowdfunding response in the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States to understand the incidence of initiation of COVID-19-related campaigns and compare them to non-COVID-19-related campaigns. On May 16, 2020, we extracted all available data available on US campaigns that contained narratives and were created between January 1 and May 10, 2020, on GoFundMe. We identified the subset of COVID-19-related campaigns using keywords relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic. We explored the incidence of COVID-19-related campaigns by geography, by category, and over time, and we compared the characteristics of the campaigns to those of non-COVID-19-related campaigns after March 11, when the pandemic was declared. We then used a natural language processing algorithm to cluster campaigns by narrative content using overlapping keywords. We found that there was a substantial increase in overall GoFundMe web-based crowdfunding campaigns in March, largely attributable to COVID-19-related campaigns. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic persisted and progressed, the number of campaigns per COVID-19 case declined more than tenfold across all states. The states with the earliest disease burden had the fewest campaigns per case, indicating a lack of a case-dependent response. COVID-19-related campaigns raised more money, had a longer narrative description, and were more likely to be shared on Facebook than other campaigns in the study period. Web-based crowdfunding appears to be a stopgap for only a minority of campaigners. The novelty of an emergency likely impacts both campaign initiation and crowdfunding success, as it reflects the affective response of a community. Crowdfunding activity likely serves as an early signal for emerging needs and societal sentiment for communities in acute distress that could be used by governments and aid organizations to guide disaster relief and policy.

Crowdfunding represents an attractive new option for funding research projects, especially for students and early-career scientists or in the absence of governmental aid in some countries. The number of successful science-related crowdfunding campaigns is growing, which demonstrates the public's willingness to support and participate in scientific projects. Putting together a crowdfunding campaign is not trivial, however, so here is a guide to help you make yours a success.