Development and Launch of a Comprehensive Fish and Wildlife Reporting Mobile Application

Abstract

This paper describes the conception, development, launch, marketing, and maintenance of the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission Reporter (FWC Reporter), a mobile application (app) that the public can use to report fish and wildlife and environmental concerns to appropriate state agency offices. The FWC Reporter, launched in February 2018, is the first comprehensive reporting app developed by a fish and wildlife agency in the United States that we are aware of. On the basis of a consumer concept test and library research, the app's design incorporates elements of fast and frugal heuristics and inductive decision theory. The FWC developed this version of the app in-house with an open-source development package, and involves primarily email and telephone to send reports and facilitate communication with agency staff. From February 2018 through December 31, 2018, the FWC recorded over 1,000 downloads on Android and 4,308 on Apple devices, and 258 emailed reports. Since fish and wildlife reporting apps do not provide clear benefit to the user (low value proposition), it is crucial that offices receiving reports are proactive in building and maintaining their own reporting constituency. Engagement with the public is not only through active recruitment of app users, but also following up after a report is made so that the users know their efforts are appreciated. Two FWC programs demonstrated successful engagement, horseshoe crabs Limulus polyphemus and fish kills, as they received the most email reports. Other topics for any conservation or fish and wildlife agency to consider when developing their own reporting mobile app include download intention, adoption, continuance, habit formation, public and organizational acceptance, and marketing.

Using Citizen Science to Complement IoT Data Collection: A Survey of Motivational and Engagement Factors in Technology-Centric Citizen Science Projects

“…These findings are consistent with other studies as well which identity 'helping the environment' theme as the strongest motivator [44], which was also noted as the highest-scoring motivators for environmental volunteers [45]. As such, prior interest on specific thematic areas can influence how to engage citizens in a CS projects [34][35][36][37][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53]. In other words, the theme of the application is important for the citizen to get engaged.…”

“…Feedback is also highlighted as one of the key motivational factors for CS projects [43,[46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53]56,57,[61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76]. Feedback could be provided to users in many forms such as impromptu acknowledgement of the report or data, status or updates on the issues or reports, the outcome of the report or data, how the data are being used, how useful have the data been and how their contribution affected the cause, services or research as part of a CS project [26].…”

“…One of the studies showed that around 76% of participants rated the trust as one of the main participatory factors [59]. In addition, generating the belief and understanding the value of their contribution is also a key factor [48,50,53,59,61,68,74,108,109]. "Why engage in a CS project when citizens start believing that nothing is going to change?"…”