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Participation in Hackathons: A Multi-Methods
View on Motivators, Demotivators and Citizen
Participation
Anthony Simonofski1,2Q, Victor Amaral de Sousa1, Antoine Clarinval1, and
Benoˆıt Vanderose1
1Namur Digital Institute, University of Namur, Belgium
firstname.lastname@unamur.be
2Faculty of Economics and Business, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
anthony.simonofski@kuleuven.be
Abstract. Hackathons are problem-focused programming events that
allow conceiving, implementing, and presenting digital innovations. The
number of participants is one of the key success factors of hackathons.
In order to maximize that number, it is essential to understand what
motivates people to participate. Previous work on the matter focused on
quantitative studies and addressed neither the topic of demotivators nor
the relationship between participation in hackathons and citizen partici-
pation, although hackathons constitute a promising participation method
where citizens can build their own project, amongst other methods such
as meetings or online platforms. Therefore, in this study, we examined
a specific hackathon organized in Belgium and collected data about the
motivators and demotivators of the participants through a questionnaire
and in-depth interviews, thereby following a multi-methods approach.
This study contributes to the scarce theoretical discussion on the topic
by defining precisely the motivators and demotivators and provides rec-
ommendations for hackathon organizers to help them bring in more par-
ticipants. Furthermore, from our exploration of the relationship between
participation in hackathons and citizen participation, we suggest a cit-
izen participation ecosystem embedding hackathons to provide benefits
for the society.
Keywords: Hackathon ·Motivator ·Citizen participation ·Multi-methods
1 Introduction
A hackathon can be defined as a “problem-focused computer programming event,
as well as a contest to pitch, program, and present instances of prototype digital
innovations [...]. It brings together programmers and others [...] to collaborate
intensively over a short period of time on software projects [...]” [3]. There are dif-
ferent types of hackathons [3], which can serve different purposes. As mentioned
in [5], hackathons can be used by organizations looking for a way to innovate
within their line of business (company-internal hackathons). Hackathons are also
2 A. Simonofski et al.
more and more organized in the academic world and in the public domain (civic
hackathons) as a solution to develop new ideas and improve the skills of the par-
ticipants. In the latter case, hackathons are considered as a way for citizens to
participate and to contribute to the improvement of services delivered by govern-
ments, for example by exploring public data repositories [7, 4]. For focus-specific
hackathons to which anyone can participate (e.g. hackathons about climate, fi-
nance, etc.), one critical success factor is the number of participants. Therefore,
it is key to understand the factors impacting people’s motivation to participate.
While research on the hackathon phenomenon is still scarce, several stud-
ies have been conducted on the factors impacting the willingness of people to
participate to such events [3, 7, 10, 13, 6]. However, most of the motivators are
presented in a vague way and without detailed information. As a result, it is dif-
ficult for organizers to leverage these motivators to take concrete actions aiming
to increase people’s willingness to participate in hackathons. Also, the factors
demotivating participation are left aside by the related studies. Finally, the re-
lationship between the participation in a hackathon and citizen participation
remains unexplored. A wide variety of citizen participation methods exist (e.g.
workshops, participation in town hall meetings, etc.) and hackathons represent
one of them where citizens can build their own projects and have a concrete
impact on society if the project is implemented [17].
In order to bridge these gaps, this paper presents a study conducted during
a focus-specific hackathon organized by a junior enterprise of computer science
students in Belgium. We followed a multi-methods approach combining a ques-
tionnaire and in-depth interviews to collect insights on motivators, demotivators
and on the relationship between hackathons and citizen participation. Then,
we compared our findings to previous studies and provided recommendations
for hackathon organizers based on the gathered insights. Finally, our findings
allowed us to propose a citizen participation ecosystem aiming at generating
benefits for society through hackathons.
The remaining of this paper is structured as follows. First, Section 2 presents
related studies and the theoretical model used as a basis for the research. Then,
the methodology applied to collect and analyze the data is detailed in Section 3.
Section 4 presents the findings on motivators, demotivators, and the relationship
between participation in hackathons and participation as a citizen. The impli-
cations of these findings for research and practice are discussed in Section 5.
Section 6 discusses the limitations of the study and provides leads for further
research. Finally, Section 7 closes the paper with a summary of its contributions.
2 Previous Studies and Theoretical Model
Previous work has studied the motivators to participate in hackathons. We must
here note that we restricted this background evaluation to papers explicitly
studying the motivations to participate in hackathons. Indeed, other studies
related to motivation to engage in crowdsourcing (e.g. [18, 15]) and in Open
Source Communities (e.g. [1]) were not considered as their focus is different.
Participation in Hackathons: A Multi-Methods View 3
Table 1 summarizes the previous studies within the scope of the present research
and presents the most important elements they identified.
Table 1. Overview of previous work studying motivators to participate in hackathons
Code Reference Methodology Studied motivators
P1 [3] Questionnaire Learning, Networking, Social
change, Prizes
P2 [7] Questionnaire Learning, Networking, Solving
civic issues, Performing teamwork
P3 [10] Questionnaire, interviews
(not for motivators)
Fun, Intellectual challenge,
Reputation, User need, Career
P4 [13] Documents, questionnaire,
interviews, observations
Professional networking, Fun,
Intellectual challenge
P5 [6] Questionnaire Recognition, Fun, Financial
rewards, Learning
Building up on these sources, we designed a theoretical model represented in
Figure 1. First, the model includes the motivators identified in previous work. In
order to extract these factors, we listed several individual motivators from the
studies and grouped them into overarching categories that can be found in the
model. Three additional factors, namely logistics, coaching, and influence from
others, have been added following preliminary discussions with 8 hackathon par-
ticipants. These discussions were open-ended in nature where we first asked the
participants about what motivates them to participate to have more fine-grained
information about their motivation. We then showed them the theoretical model
and asked them if it was complete in their opinion. We also added a general “de-
motivating factors” element impacting the willingness to participate. Finally, we
added the relationship between the willingness to participate in hackathons and
the willingness to participate as a citizen, in the broader sense. For each element
of the theoretical model, Figure 1 specifies the past studies in which the element
was found (see Table 1). The elements that were not found in past studies are
indicated as “NEW”.
This model constitutes the basis to develop the questionnaire as well as the
interview guide we used to collect data for this research. These are also based
on previously developed instruments such as [6], authors of which called for the
use in other regions of the world than Brazil to compare the significance of the
motivators they identified.
3 Methodology
3.1 Context of the Study
In order to collect data for this study, we examined the “Hope For Climate”
hackathon that took place in Namur (Belgium) from the 18th to the 20th of
4 A. Simonofski et al.
Fig. 1. Theoretical model based on previous studies
October 2019. It is a focus-specific hackathon that did not have requirements
in terms of participants profiles, data, or technology to use. This event drew 65
participants. As Namur is a city with one university and several colleges, partic-
ipants were, to a large extent, students coming from different institutions. They
had to form groups of 4-5 to build their solutions. The goal of this hackathon
was to envision and implement innovative solutions to address the phenomenon
of climate change, with different sub-themes such as agriculture, waste manage-
ment and green mobility. The ideas and their implementation were, on the last
day, evaluated by a jury of professors and domain experts. After that, a number
of non-financial rewards were given to the winning teams.
3.2 Data Collection and Analysis
In the present study, both quantitative (through a questionnaire) and qualita-
tive (through in-depth interviews) data were collected. According to Jonhnson et
al. [9], a combination of both quantitative and qualitative methods contributes
to the identification of informative, complete, balanced, and useful research re-
sults. Furthermore, this multi-methods approach combining a questionnaire and
interviews was also followed in a study on eliciting participants’ motivation to
participate in Google’s Summer of Code [15] and it allowed the authors to pro-
vide a rich view of the motivators.
The quantitative insights helped us understand the importance of particular
motivators for the participants and compare the results with related studies.
These insights also helped us rework the interview guide to emphasize elements
that seemed particularly important as well as elements identified as important in
other studies, that however received less interest from the people in our sample.
Through the interviews, we were able to to gain a detailed understanding of the
motivators and demotivators, which was lacking in most related studies.
Participation in Hackathons: A Multi-Methods View 5
Quantitative Data The questionnaire is made of four parts. First, general
questions are asked about previous experience with hackathons. In the second
part, we refined the nine motivating factors in Figure 1 into 26 individual motiva-
tors, each relating to only one higher-level factor. We did this in order to gather
information at a more granular level, which is key to have a better understand-
ing of the higher-level motivators. Respondents were invited to indicate to which
extent they were motivated by each motivator on a 5-point Likert scale going
from “Totally disagree” to “Totally agree”. To develop this part of the question-
naire, inspiration was drawn from the one used in [6]. An open-ended question
was then asked about what could demotivate participation in a hackathon. Since
no previous work details demotivators, an open-ended question appeared as the
best option to leave room for creativity in respondents’ answers [2]. The third
part is dedicated to the relationship between participation in hackathons and
citizen participation. Respondents were asked to what extent they participate
in hackathons because they feel engaged with the theme and whether partici-
pating in hackathons increases their willingness to give their opinion on public
matters as citizens. Respondents were also asked on the effect of participating
in hackathons on their willingness to exercise citizen participation through the
participation methods listed in [17] or through a civic hackathon. All the ques-
tions in this part are presented on a 5-point Likert scale. The last part of the
questionnaire contains demographic questions and allowed collecting data on
respondents’ gender, age, education, and background. The full questionnaire is
available as supplementary material3.
A pre-test of the questionnaire was conducted with 8 people, including 4 with
experience in organizing and participating in hackathons. These 8 people were
the ones interviewed for the preliminary discussions. Feedback was collected on
the completeness of the motivators list, on the clarity of the questions, and on
the layout of the questionnaire. No issues were raised about the completeness of
the questionnaire, and no unclear statement or question was mentioned in the
feedback. However, some aspects related to the layout/structure were criticized
and the questionnaire was adapted accordingly.
Qualitative Data In order to complement the results obtained in the quanti-
tative analysis, we conducted in-depth interviews with hackathon participants.
We relied on the results of the qualitative study to select people to interview ac-
cording to a diversity criterion. We focused on the participants that had opinions
differing from was is typically observed in related studies, as well as participants
conforming well to what was observed in these studies.
To define the themes to cover during the interviews, we established an in-
terview guide. It includes questions related to the motivators and demotivators
of our theoretical model as well as citizen participation. The interview guide
has been refined several times thanks to the feedback received from an expert
in qualitative studies and the pre-test conducted with 8 people not being part
3https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338885008_Participation_in_
Hackathons_External_Report_Questionnaire_and_Interview_Guide
6 A. Simonofski et al.
of the study. We are aware that presenting a list of motivators to respondents
might drive their choice. However, the preliminary discussions and the choice to
answer open-ended questions about overall motivations mitigate that risk. The
interview guide is available in the supplementary material.
To analyze the data gathered through interviews, we used a coding approach
as described in [14]. First, we summarized the interviews by keeping only the
interesting parts of the transcripts and we recorded the summaries in a data
memo, interview per interview. Afterwards, the coding of the summarized in-
terviews was split between the researchers involved in the present paper. Each
researcher coded the data about the factors assigned to him, through all the
interviews. To do so, the first step consisted in skimming through all the in-
terviews to get an overall view on participant’s answers. After that, important
sentences were highlighted and coded using short sentences. The codes were then
inserted in a table, allowing to perform analysis for a given theme across all the
interviews. As the analysis was progressing, the researchers could write memos
to record insights and thoughts. The whole coding phase was conducted in a
cloud-based document shared among the researchers who could therefore follow
the coding process as applied by the others. This was useful to reach agreement
on the codes that were used and to make adjustments as needed.
4 Results
4.1 Sample Description
In total, 50 of the hackathon participants (40 males and 10 females) completed
the questionnaire. They are aged between 18 and 25, with an average age of
21. The young age of the participants is a result of the fact that the hackathon
attracted mostly students. Whereas the examined hackathon was a first experi-
ence for most of the respondents, 14 (all males) reported having participated in
hackathons in the past. 9 of them participated in one previous hackathon, the 5
remaining having participated in two or more. Table 2 describes the respondents
sample by education level (i.e. highest degree obtained) and background. The
larger part of the sample consists of males enrolled in computer science studies.
In total, we were able to interview 11 of the 50 respondents. Due to space restric-
tions, a summarized view of the sample’s distribution is provided. The detailed
information is available in the supplementary material of this paper.
4.2 Quantitative Analysis
Motivators Figure 2 shows, for each of the 26 individual motivators, the num-
ber of respondents who considered it as such. These are the ones who answered
“agree” or “totally agree” when asked if their participation in a hackathon was
motivated by the motivator at hand. The motivators colored in dark blue moti-
vate at least 75% of the respondents. They mainly cover aspects related to fun,
learning, and influence from other people. The motivators colored in light blue
Participation in Hackathons: A Multi-Methods View 7
Table 2. Respondents sample description by education level and background.
Education / Background Computer science E-business Other Total
Secondary 25 1 3 29
Bachelor 11 4 – 15
Master 4 – 1 5
Other 1 – – 1
Total 41 5 4 50
motivate at least half of the respondents but less than 75%. They mainly concern
the benefits of the hackathon for the society, the logistics, and the opportunity to
learn about a domain. Finally, the motivators colored in red motivate a minority
of the respondents. They cover recognition and rewards for the main part.
Fig. 2. Number of respondents who are motivated by each motivator. Individual mo-
tivators are colored from dark red to dark blue accordingly.
Demotivators Concerning the demotivators, the question was asked in an
open-ended way. Although it was not mandatory to answer, 44 of the 50 respon-
dents did provide an answer. In total, 27 distinct demotivators were extracted
from the answers. They were aggregated into 12 categories listed in Table 3 and
ordered by number of respondents having mentioned them.
Link with citizen participation As for the questions related to citizen par-
ticipation, 25 respondents reported that they participate in hackathons because
8 A. Simonofski et al.
Table 3. Demotivators for participation listed in the questionnaire.
Demotivating factor Occurrences
Financial aspects (participation fee, no free food) 11
Theme (not interesting, not inspiring) 11
Personal schedule (not enough free time to participate, inconvenient
date, already something else planned, laziness) 9
Location (accessibility) 7
Organization (lack of commitment from staff, bad organization) 5
Too high requirements (expectations for the output to produce, level
of skill required, fear of lacking skills) 5
Setting (general setting, sleeping conditions, not enough food, not
enough activities during breaks) 5
Social aspects (no friends attending, not enough participants) 5
Constraints (not enough freedom, mandatory attendance to talks,
mandatory technology) 4
Too much competition 3
No reward 2
Business (no sponsor, too strong emphasis on business) 2
they feel engaged in the theme addressed during the event. Also, 22 respon-
dents indicated that participating in a hackathon increases their willingness to
give their opinion as citizens. Pearson’s correlation coefficient between the an-
swers to these two questions reaches 0.54. This suggests that participants whose
participation is motivated by the theme could be good candidates for citizen par-
ticipation initiatives on the same subject. Regarding the questions on whether
participating in a hackathon increases respondents’ willingness to exercise citizen
participation through various methods, no striking finding could be extracted.
For each method, approximately half of the respondents gave a neutral answer.
Nonetheless, a slight preference toward offline methods can be observed. Figure 3
shows the answers distribution, going from “Totally disagree” in dark red to “To-
tally agree” in dark blue. It can be observed that the workshop and the civic
hackathon received more positive answers than the others. Another interesting
observation is the high correlation between the answers for the “learn about
the domain” motivator and those for the questions on participation methods
(ranging from 0.38 to 0.48 for most methods). This suggests that participants
attending talks on the domain at the hackathon may be interested to extend
their engagement on the theme through citizen participation.
4.3 Qualitative Analysis
Overall motivators As introductory question, interviewees were asked about
their motivators to attend hackathons in general. The most important motiva-
Participation in Hackathons: A Multi-Methods View 9
Fig. 3. Answers distribution for the questions on whether participating in a hackathon
increases respondents’ willingness to exercise citizen participation through various
methods, going from “Totally disagree” in dark red (left) to “Totally agree” in dark
blue (right).
tor is fun, mentioned by 9 out of 11 informants. The motivators that came next
are the opportunity to learn (8), the influence from others (7), the theme (4),
the proximity of the hackathon location (3), the opportunity to test one’s de-
velopment skills (3), the conviviality (2), the rewards (2), the opportunity to
work on new projects (1), the prestige (1), the convincing communication by
the organizers (1), the opportunity to meet sponsors (1), and the professional
recognition (1). The two interviewees who had participated in hackathons in the
past indicated that their motivations evolved since their first hackathon.
Rewards The rewards were not considered as a major motivation by the in-
terviewees. This finding is consistent with the quantitative insights. Depending
on the interest of the interviewees, the preference was set on non-financial re-
wards (for the pleasure of receiving a “gift” and part of the fun experience) or
on financial ones. This latter interest on financial reward was revealed by an
interviewee with a high number of participation in hackathons. He now makes a
balance between the efforts necessary to win the hackathon and the amount of
money to be won. One interviewee mentioned he would like hackathons to offer
a more diverse set of prizes to soften competition during the event.
Recognition Most of the interviewees do not participate in hackathons hoping
to get some recognition. Rather, they view recognition as a nice side-effect. Those
who are looking for recognition want to be recognized for their technical skills,
but not only. They also want to be recognized for their way of thinking, their
determination, their engagement in societal issues, etc. For other interviewees,
participating in hackathons is a way of feeling proud of themselves and building
up self-confidence, thus as a form of self-recognition.
Future opportunities This motivator was elicited as heavily linked with recog-
nition. Indeed, recognition is sought either from peers (e.g. other participants,
fellow students) or from companies. Some participants have a prior interest in
specific companies. In this case, the presence of these during the event can be a
motivator as the hackathon represents an opportunity to be recognized by these
companies. Those participants would seek recognition by getting in touch with
10 A. Simonofski et al.
the companies, demonstrating their abilities during the event, or promoting their
participation in a hackathon on their resume.
Fun One of the elements that was mentioned multiple times is the general at-
mosphere of the hackathon and the fun associated with it. There are a number of
elements contributing to the creation of the atmosphere, making the fun a com-
plex yet essential motivator to define. A first element is the freedom left to the
participants. Besides the final deadline, participants of the examined hackathon
had no obligations and had complete freedom around what they were doing and
how to manage their time. A number of training sessions and conferences where
organized but attendance was not mandatory. Participants seemed to like this
ability to walk freely and “do whatever they want”. Another element contribut-
ing to the atmosphere is the fact that participants were barely sleeping and had
the possibility to sleep on premises, which was fun for some of the interviewees.
Besides this, a number of elements related to the social context created in
the hackathon were identified as contributors to the fun. These include the fact
that people are programming with friends, interacting and meeting with other
people with similar interests, being among “geeks” to code for fun and finally,
engaging in distracting activities such as playing cards during breaks.
Another recurrent element is the competition spirit of the participants. The
examined hackathon was centered around conviviality rather than competition.
While it was mentioned as a positive aspect by some, others would have liked
more competition.
In addition to these elements, the ability to learn and to challenge oneself
to create something concrete in a short time frame to solve issues faced in a
problem domain was also mentioned as part of the fun. The social dimension of
the hackathon came to reinforce the fun that participants found in these aspects.
Learning Learning was one of the motivating factors identified by past studies
which applied also in our case. Through the interviews, we gained insights about
the elements participants expected to learn. They can be grouped into three
categories. First, there are technical skills such as programming languages and
libraries. Second, there are skills related to project management and particular
soft skills such as time management, the ability to work under pressure, the
efficient coordination and collaboration with freshly met people, and commu-
nication about a project idea and about a product. Finally, there is knowledge
about the theme of the hackathon (e.g. climate change). Based on the interviews,
it appears that hackathons could be a good way to raise awareness on particu-
lar problems. Most of the interviewees were interested in more than one of the
learning categories previously mentioned, to a different extent. Some expected
learning more about technical elements while others had more interest for soft
skills.
Interestingly, one interviewee mentioned he was participating in hackathons
to put his prior knowledge into practice rather then learn new skills. For him,
Participation in Hackathons: A Multi-Methods View 11
the hackathon contributed to the learning of previously acquired skills, thereby
building up experience rather than acquiring new knowledge.
Coaching In the examined hackathon there were coaches with limited technical
knowledge but able to help participants with soft skills, project management,
idea development, and communication. Overall, the presence of coaches was well
received by the interviewees and considered useful. We found that coaches should
help participants mostly regarding soft skills and idea development. Technical
assistance is nice to have but less important and it should not be the main as-
pect of coaching. Coaches should be present without disturbing the participants.
According to the interviewees, coaches should provide short trainings on specific
soft skills and come to check on them 1-2 times a day.
The quantitative findings show that coaching is not a motivator. However,
some interviewees mentioned that the presence of coaches to support them and
to challenge their ideas was a source of motivation and stimulation. We believe
that the discrepancy between the quantitative and the qualitative findings is due
to the fact that we discussed coaching in detail during the interviews and defined
with the interviewees what would be an appropriate coaching. The questionnaire
did not provide any detail about how the coaching would be done.
Benefits for society The quantitative analysis showed that improving the
society and developing a product that can help others are important motivators.
However, the findings from the qualitative analysis temper this result as most
interviewees do not think hackathons can have a concrete impact on society.
They believe that the ideas are not innovative enough as they have probably
been tested elsewhere already. Another criticism linked to the theme is that the
problem to address is complex and will not be impacted by simple solutions.
One interviewee mentioned that if he wanted to help with climate (theme of
the examined hackathon), he would “go out and clean the streets”. A possible
solution proposed by two interviewees is to invite investors at the beginning
of the hackathon so that they can express their needs and later invest in the
projects with high potential or provide them incubators to develop their idea.
Another solution is to develop a wiki where all ideas developed in the hackathon
can be gathered for others to build upon them.
Providing benefits to society is considered as a nice side-effect of hackathons
but the majority of the informants do not view it as a part of their civic duty to
participate in such events. However, four interviewees mentioned that it is the
responsibility of students to suggest ideas, learn about different topics through
hackathons, and that it was a way for a different audience to “bring something
on the table” without being interested in politics. These interviewees underlined
that the positive impact of hackathons on society does not reside in the ideas
themselves but rather in the brainstorming exercise, the raising of awareness
about a theme, and the sensitivity it could raise in people about a specific issue.
12 A. Simonofski et al.
Logistics The interviewees mentioned that wifi, food, tables, and working rooms
are must haves. Showers and beds are considered as nice to have. Furthermore,
several interviewees noted that the pizza they received was a motivator.
Influence from others The influence from the social environment was consid-
ered as a key motivating factor by the interviewees. Out of the 11 interviewees,
7 stated they would never have participated without friends coming with them.
This reluctance to go alone is due to the additional difficulties it induces (work-
ing with freshly met people, getting out of one’s comfort zone). However, one
interviewee mentioned that this could constitute a nice challenge as well.
Demotivators When asking the interviewees which elements would drive their
decision not to participate in a hackathon, several elements were cited. The
most important demotivating factor is the theme, mentioned by 6 of the 11
interviewees. Other demotivators include a high fee to join the hackathon (5), a
too basic setting (3), a too strong competition spirit (3), the location and bad
accessibility (3), the technical skills of the team (1), the lack of reward (1), the
jury evaluating only the idea (1), the lack of learning opportunities (1), the lack
of networking opportunities (1), and vagueness in the information published by
the organizers when advertising the hackathon (1). These demotivators and their
importance are consistent with the results of the quantitative analysis.
Link with citizen participation Among the interviewees, 4 mentioned that
they were not interested in being involved in a citizen participation activity
whereas 7 stated they would like to. The reasons for non-participation mentioned
by the interviewees were a lack of interest, a lack of experience, a lack of skills, the
distance to the participation activity, shyness, and a selfish personality. Among
the reasons to participate in public life, the most important driver was that the
political representatives should not be in charge of everything (4), that every
citizen has something to add in the discussion, that some groups such as students
can be underrepresented in political discussions (2), and the possibility of getting
out of one’s comfort zone and suggest ideas (1).
Regarding the preferred participation methods, the quantitative analysis
showed a slight preference for offline methods (workshops and civic hackathons).
This is consistent with the insights obtained from the interviews. Participating
through social media and online platforms was dismissed by the interviewees be-
cause it is not a real-life setting and it could foster extreme or non-constructive
opinions. Furthermore, social media force participants to share their opinion pub-
licly. Interviewees’ opinion toward offline methods was more favorable. Through
a workshop, the direct communication with officials and the consequent pos-
sible impact on political decisions was considered as a good benefit. However,
the time-consuming nature of this method still remains a barrier. The civic
hackathon method was the most preferred by the interviewees. According to
them, it allows solving concrete societal issues if they are not too complex, de-
Participation in Hackathons: A Multi-Methods View 13
livering practical and usable ideas, meeting real-life stakeholders, and submitting
semi-anonymous ideas as they emerge from a team and not from a person.
5 Discussion
5.1 Implications for Theory
Based on previous studies, we devised a theoretical model structuring motiva-
tors, demotivators, and the link between participation in hackathons and citizen
participation. Compared to previous literature, we included additional motiva-
tors and we added the concepts of demotivators and citizen participation. Also,
motivators were studied on a finer-grained level. This allowed having a more
complete understanding of the meaning of motivating factors. In most related
studies, the factors are reported as such, without further explanation of what
they actually meant (e.g. what is meant when mentioning the fun experienced
by participants). By splitting each motivating factor into individual motivators,
we were able to understand which aspects of learning, fun, and the other factors
were motivating for participants.
The results we observed are, to some extent, similar to those reported by pre-
vious studies. For instance, the fun and the learning opportunities were identified
as the most important motivators in our study. For other motivators, however,
our findings differ. Whereas recognition and networking were identified as promi-
nent motivators by several previous studies, they did not appear as such in our
case. We believe this may be due to contextual and cultural differences between
our study and previous ones. However, we did not consider these factors in our
work, and further research is required to measure their impact.
Regarding the aspects unexplored by other studies, the interviews revealed
that coaching was well-perceived by the participants and that, in an appropriate
form, it can be a motivator. Second, the influence from others and the logistics
were revealed to play an important role, respectively as motivator and demoti-
vator. Our study uncovered several demotivators, some of which are direct coun-
terparts of motivators. However, as a first attempt, their identification remained
exploratory. A valuable research work would be the design of a detailed sur-
vey instrument for demotivators, that could be completed by non-participants
as well. As for citizen participation, we noted that the questionnaire was not
sufficient for our research question. Answers to the questions were mostly neu-
tral, and it was thus difficult to formulate insights. We believe this is due to
the fact that citizen participation is an unfamiliar topic for many respondents,
which were therefore not sure what to answer. The complementary qualitative
approach was thus necessary. It showed that the civic hackathon is the preferred
participation method of hackathon participants. This opens the way for further
research on this method with this audience.
5.2 Implications for Practice
Hackathons within a citizen participation ecosystem Hackathons can
be considered as a participation method allowing citizens to give ideas and
14 A. Simonofski et al.
concretely build solutions to improve society. These hackathons are referred
to as civic hackathons [8]. However, as highlighted by the qualitative insights,
hackathons do not necessarily lead to increased benefits for society even though
they are the favored participation method for the hackathon audience. Therefore,
based on the insights gathered from the interviews and on previous literature [8,
16], we propose to embed hackathons within a participation ecosystem with
complementary methods, as illustrated in Figure 4.
Fig. 4. Hackathons within a citizen participation ecosystem
As input for the ecosystem, workshops with practitioners and citizens can be
conducted in order to elicit concrete needs from the population. Then, during
the hackathon, other methods could be used to fuel the idea generation. Social
media and e-participation platforms could be analyzed using opinion mining
algorithms (see [11] for an overview of methods). Furthermore, a strong coaching
by knowledgeable experts should be performed to challenge ideas and help refine
them. As output of this ecosystem, we recommend the ideas to be put on a wiki
to facilitate dissemination. Furthermore, we recommend the invitation of public
agents, political representatives or investors to witness the presentations of the
top ideas to increase their chance of implementation. Finally, the ideas and the
respective teams behind them could be supported by an incubator to help the
team going from a prototype to a fully-functional solution.
Recommendations for organizers Based on the insights collected in the
in-depth interviews, we list nine recommendations for potential hackathon orga-
nizers in order to maximize the number of participants.
1. Provide activities to develop the fun experience (playful activities or inter-
action between participants).
2. As the main demotivator to attend a hackathon is the theme, find a balance
between the relevance and the feasibility of the theme.
Participation in Hackathons: A Multi-Methods View 15
3. Since a lot of interviewees would not go alone, especially as first-time partic-
ipants, provide an ice-breaking activity to encourage people to come alone
without fear. Furthermore, organizers should clearly communicate about
these activities before the hackathon to encourage the prospective partic-
ipants to come (even alone if none of their friends is participating).
4. As competition is not a main motivator, plan different rewards to keep a sense
of competition but give everyone a chance to win by focusing on different
aspects of their solution.
5. Develop the technical training if the focus is on technology and the thematic
training to raise awareness on the topic if the hackathon has a specific theme.
In both cases, provide training for soft skills such as pitching and ideation.
6. Enroll coaches to support participants in the development of their idea.
Coaches should remain non-intrusive and intervene at appropriate times.
7. As the participation fee is an important demotivator, find sponsors or apply
for funding instead of charging participants.
8. Be clear on the objectives of the hackathon and provide development oppor-
tunities for the ideas (incubators, investors, wiki, etc.) after the event.
9. Plan the basic hackathon requirements (beds, showers, wifi, etc.) and do not
underestimate the importance of pizzas.
6 Limitations and Future Work
The study presented in this paper has several limitations. These are discussed
below, along with further research leads resulting from them.
As discussed in Section 5, some of our findings differ from what has been
reported by related studies. This may be due to differences in contextual (e.g.
type of hackathon, characteristics of participants) and cultural factors. Thus, the
extent to which our findings can be generalized is limited. However, we developed
a new survey instrument which we believe can be applied in other hackathon
contexts as well. Conducting different studies with our survey instrument would
allow measuring the impact of those contextual and cultural factors. For further
studies, we recommend to study a larger hackathon with a more diverse set
of participants. Then, by applying random sampling to select respondents, the
risk of bias can decrease. Furthermore, we also recommend to interested future
researchers to collect data from people that considered going to hackathons and
that decided not to go in the end. This would allow a richer analysis of the
demotivating factors.
The second limitation stems from the audience of this hackathon, which
mostly consists of first-time participants enrolled in computer science studies.
This sample was interesting as the previous experience did not influence their
motivations. However, the qualitative analysis hinted that the factors impacting
a potential participant’s motivation evolve as they attend hackathons. Due to
its focus on one hackathon and the nature of its participants, our study could
not yield detailed insights on this phenomenon. Therefore, we recommend to
conduct a longitudinal study to better understand this evolution.
16 A. Simonofski et al.
Third, even though we suggest actionable recommendations for organizers as
well as a participation ecosystem for hackathons, these are not tested in practice.
Therefore, we recommend to follow action research [12] to test these elements in
practical cases and validate them over time.
7 Conclusion
One critical success factor of hackathons is a sufficient number of participants.
In order to maximize it, it is key to understand what motivates participants to
attend hackathons. With this purpose, we conducted a study following a multi-
methods approach, involving the collection and analysis of both quantitative and
qualitative data, respectively through a questionnaire and in-depth interviews.
In total, we collected 50 answers to our questionnaire and interviewed 11 of the
respondents. Data was collected from participants of a focus-specific hackathon
organized by computer science students on the theme of climate change.
The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, based on existing work
on motivations to participate in hackathons, we built a new survey instrument
measuring 26 individual fine-grained motivators. The quantitative data collected
from the questionnaire allowed us to identify the most important motivators
and to compare our findings with previous studies. The fun, the intellectual
challenge, the opportunity to learn technical skills, and the influence from others
appeared as the main motivators. Through the interviews, further insights were
collected to define them more precisely. Second, we studied the demotivators to
cast some light on the factors that can deter people from going to hackathons.
We observed that the theme and the entry price are the most important ones.
Third, as hackathons constitute a citizen participation method, we investigated
the relationship between participating in a hackathon and the willingness to
engage in various citizen participation methods. We found that participating in
hackathons would increase the willingness of participants to engage in offline
participation methods, and especially in civic hackathons.
Based on the collected insights, we were able to provide actionable recommen-
dations to hackathon organizers and to propose a model embedding hackathons
within a citizen participation ecosystem. These outputs constitute a promising
basis for further research.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
and the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) for their support. The
research pertaining to these results received financial aid from the ERDF for the
Wal-e-Cities project with award number [ETR121200003138] and the Federal
Science Policy according to the agreement of subsidy [BR/154/A4/FLEXPUB].
We also thank the members of CSLabs who agreed to integrate our research in
the event they organized. Finally, we thank the participants of the hackathon
who, despite the tight schedule, dedicated time to our research.
Participation in Hackathons: A Multi-Methods View 17
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