Bridging the Benefits of Online and Community Supported Citizen Science: A Case Study on Motivation and Retention with Conservation-Oriented Volunteers

Abstract

This study explores the motivations and barriers for participation and persistence in an innovative citizen science pilot project with Virginia Master Naturalist volunteers. The project combines self-guided online training, in-person meetings, and collaboration through social networking and "mental modeling" to support on-the-ground development and execution of citizen science projects developed by participants. Results suggest that the two strongest motivators for volunteers to participate in the project were an interest in the environment and an interest in protecting a local natural resource. Our findings indicate that volunteers with more prior experience participating in citizen science projects and those with higher gross incomes were more likely to persist in the project. Our data also suggest that decisions to persist or drop out of the project were influenced by volunteers' time commitment, their ability to use the online tools, the perceived relevance of the resources, and the saliency of the project. Projects that arose from pre-existing environmental issues seemed to be more salient and may have enhanced volunteer persistence. We discuss the influence of our findings and the implications for the development of future citizen science projects.

Evolving interest and sense of self in an environmental citizen science program

“…Clary and Snyder (1999) used this approach to create the Volunteer Functions Inventory, a general survey instrument assessing six basic categories fundamental to volunteering (Table 1). Subsequent work on environmentoriented volunteer motivations (e.g., Bruyere and Rappe 2007, Asah and Blahna 2013, Carballo-Cárdenas and Tobi 2016, Domroese and Johnson 2017 has adapted these basic categories (Table 1), while simultaneously uncovering domain-specific motivators for participation including science broadly, as well as nature or the environment (Ryan et al 2001, Frensley et al 2017, Ganzevoort et al 2017. Finally, studies of environmental volunteerism have highlighted situation-specific motivators, or motivations attached to the specifics of the activity at hand (Table 1).…”

Dynamics of Engagement in Citizen Science: Results from the “Yes, I do!”-Project

“…Only recently have researchers begun to study the impact of different strategies to recruit participants and to influence their sustained engagement throughout a project West and Pateman 2016). The voluntary character of citizen science, the effect of personal circumstances (West and Pateman 2016), a possible lack of time (Frensley et al 2017), and the existence of other initiatives competing for volunteers' attention (Simula 2013) seem to be the main hurdles to their sustained participation. Therefore, project organizers use various means to avoid a high loss of volunteers whose time and effort are needed to keep a project moving.…”

“…Despite the uneven distribution of contributions and the importance of sustained engagement, little has been said about how projects should evaluate the effectiveness of their recruitment and engagement strategies in achieving project objectives (Curtis 2018;West and Pateman 2016;Wiggins 2013), including both the quantity and quality of data. Because of their voluntary character, lack of formal contracts, and absence of monetary rewards, recruiting and engaging citizens throughout the course of a citizen science project are the biggest challenges that these projects have to face (Frensley et al 2017;West and Pateman 2016). Moreover, the wide variety of citizen science projects, with different project designs varying in their goals (educational, scientific, conservation, preservation), tasks (data collection, processing, analysis, and validation), duration, and governance (Blohm et al 2018; makes it challenging to unravel how citizens can be converted into committed volunteers.…”

“…We contribute to the understanding of sustained engagement and its dynamics in midsize citizen science projects in three ways. First, most published research about online citizen science has focused on environmental, biomedical, and technology-related topics (Frensley et al 2017), while less attention has been paid to projects in other disciplines such as the humanities (Dobreva 2016). Our study covers a humanities project and shows the possibilities for sustained engagement.…”

Designing a Platform for Ethical Citizen Science: A Case Study of CitSci.org

“…As developers of this platform, we have witnessed people around the globe engaging in science, action, and policy based on their own interests in their communities and environment. Such engagement offers great potential benefit for both science and society through learning, participation, and action (Brossard et al 2005;Crall et al 2012;Frensley et al 2017;Mathews 2014;Newman et al 2017;Newman et al 2012;Theobald et al 2015). At the heart of the growing citizen science movement are deeply rooted and contextually appropriate values related to information sharing and use, as is evident from recent research (Bowser et al 2017) and the increasing popularity of open science, open access, open source, and crowdsourcing movements.…”