Incentivizing Truthful Responses with the Logarithmic Peer Truth Serum

We consider a participatory sensing scenario where a group of private sensors observes the same phenomenon, such as air pollution. We design a novel payment mechanism that incentivizes participation and honest behavior using the peer prediction approach, i.e. by comparing sensors reports. As it is the case with other peer prediction methods, the mechanism admits uninformed reporting equilibria. However, in the novel mechanism these equilibria result in worse payoff than truthful reporting.