Diversifying environmental volunteers by engaging with online communities

Abstract

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Benefits for visitors provided by protected areas in Bulgaria and willingness to become a conservation volunteer

“…According to Winch et al (2021) "Environmental volunteering can benefit participants and nature through improving physical and mental well-being while encouraging environmental stewardship".…”

“…The advantages of online surveys upon face to face interviews are well known -they are fast, cheap and representative (Braun et al, 2020;Cernat & Revilla, 2020). Recently, online surveys have been used for investigation of motivation to environmental volunteering (Winch et al, 2021). However, there is no comparative study of online and face-to-face survey data on the willingness to volunteer in the conservation programs in Bulgaria.…”

Towards ecological science for all by all

“…Winch et al. (2021) make a substantial contribution to this area of research first, with a systematic review of more than 1,000 papers regarding volunteer participation. From a large set of reasons for participating, they find that the most important factor is to design projects that align to the motivations of the participants.…”

“…Geoghegan et al, 2016), and the extent to which citizen science might enhance public understanding of science or engender behaviour change (Bonney et al, 2016). Winch et al (2021) make a substantial contribution to this area of research first, with a systematic review of more than 1,000 papers regarding volunteer participation. From a large set of reasons for participating, they find that the most important factor is to design projects that align to the motivations of the participants.…”

“…Although wide ranging and varied, as a collection these articles go some way to addressing the two perspectives intended for this Special Feature; the contribution of citizen science to the advancement of ecological knowledge and the contribution of community‐based perspectives to citizen science. Among these 19 papers are 16 that present original quantitative or qualitative research, a practice‐based article (Bonnet et al., 2021), a perspective (Palmer et al., 2021) and a literature review (Winch et al., 2021).…”