Exploring the Potential of Citizen Social Science for Environmental and Sustainability Research: Experiences of and with Community-Based Researchers

Abstract

Citizen social science has been developing in meaning and prevalence over the past few years, building on experiences with both citizen (natural) science and established social science methods such as participatory action research. However, most of the debate is still at the conceptual level, with strong calls for more empirical insight. Here, we critically examine the promises and challenges of citizen social science, based on two small-scale, co-created and locally embedded projects on people's relationships with urban greenspaces and community food growing, conducted as a collaboration between professional and citizen social scientists. Our findings illustrate the complexity of such research in practice and identify five dilemmas that arise from tensions between the aspirations and hopes associated with co-created citizen social science, and the pragmatic and procedural realities of citizen research in practice. We argue that citizen social science projects will have to actively engage with these in order to be successful.

Can Citizen Science in the Humanities and Social Sciences Deliver on the Sustainability Goals?

“…Only in this way could the necessary critical mass of engaged people, generated data, and diversity in the knowledge base for research, innovation, and learning be achieved to bring about the changes necessary for greater sustainability. Moreover, it is often pragmatic realities and cumbersome process flows in the collaboration of different actors that impose major hurdles to far-reaching ambitions of CSS projects [7]. In this context, Bonney et al [37] emphasize the effects of community-based projects that can bring together very different population groups.…”

“…The fact that citizen science addresses relevant challenges in the context of sustainability has also been studied several times recently [6], [7], [8]. However, the sustainability is mostly discussed for Citizen Science in general, and thus looks predominantly at technical and scientific phenomena [9].…”

Can Citizen Science in the Humanities and Social Sciences Deliver on the Sustainability Goals?

“…Only in this way could the necessary critical mass of engaged people, generated data, and diversity in the knowledge base for research, innovation, and learning be achieved to bring about the changes necessary for greater sustainability. Moreover, it is often pragmatic realities and cumbersome process flows in the collaboration of different actors that impose major hurdles to far-reaching ambitions of CSS projects [7]. In this context, Bonney et al [41] emphasize the effects of communitybased projects that can bring together very different population groups.…”

“…The fact that CS addresses relevant challenges in the context of sustainability has also been studied several times recently [6], [7], [8]. However, the sustainability is mostly discussed for CS in general, and thus looks predominantly at technical and scientific phenomena [9].…”

Can Citizen Science in the Humanities and Social Sciences Deliver on the Sustainability Goals?

“…The fact that CSaddresses relevant challenges in the context of sustainability has also been studied several times recently [6], [7], [8]. However, the sustainability is mostly discussed for CS in general, and thus looks predominantly at technical and scientific phenomena [9].…”