Individual- and community-level impacts of volunteer environmental monitoring: a synthesis of peer-reviewed literature

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Citizens have long contributed to scientific research about the environment through volunteer environmental monitoring programs. Their participation has also resulted in outcomes for themselves, their communities, and the environment. This research synthesizes 35 peer-reviewed journal articles that reported such outcomes through 2012. This collection of articles was derived from a pool of 436 peer-reviewed journal articles about participatory environmental monitoring. Reported outcomes for participants and communities ranged from increasing personal knowledge and community awareness to changing attitudes and behaviors, building social capital, and ultimately, influencing change in natural resource management and policies. Mixed results were reported in regard to citizen participation in natural resource decision-making processes and in terms of participant knowledge gain. Future research recommendations that address identified knowledge gaps include the following: (1) assessing knowledge beyond the basic content of the subject of monitoring to better address the value of volunteer environmental monitoring as a public participation tool; (2) conducting independent research across programs to enable null or negative outcome reporting, understand commonalities of outcomes across programs, and make linkages between outcomes and program characteristics; (3) carrying out rigorous research that includes data collection and statistical analysis focused on the effectiveness of citizen participation in decision making; (4) assessing the time component of outcome achievement to inform the volunteer monitoring community; and (5) conducting additional research to identify changes in attitudes and behaviors, particularly geared toward minimizing losses in biodiversity and impacts of climate change.

Citizen Science: Probing the Virtues and Contexts of Participatory Research

“…Educational outcomes are the most frequently studied effect of citizen science projects, according to one metaanalysis of the literature (Stepenuck and Green 2015). Most studies, unsurprisingly, show that citizen scientists learn content knowledge about the subject they are studying, although if participants who elect to join a project already have high levels of science education, such gains may not occur (Overdevest, Orr, and Stepenuck 2004).…”

“…Numerous other studies present evidence that participation in citizen science builds "social capital" (Stepenuck and Green 2015;Wagner and Fernandez-Gimenez 2008;Floress, Prokopy, and Allred 2011;Nerbonne and Nelson 2004). Social capital is typically conceptualized as trust, norms of reciprocity, and social networks that enable a community to collectively solve problems.…”

Volunteer stream monitoring: Do the data quality and monitoring experience support increased community involvement in freshwater decision making?

“…Most have concluded that, with appropriate resourcing and robust protocols, volunteer data agree closely enough with professional data for use in government http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol21/iss4/art32/ Involving community members in monitoring increases not only their ability to contribute data, but also their ability to discuss their knowledge with experts (described as "interactional expertise" by Carolan 2006). Community members participating in environmental monitoring also commonly show increased scientific literacy, greater awareness of local ecosystems and wider environmental issues, stronger social networks including relationships with local government, and greater interest in freshwater planning (Bliss et al 2001, Savan et al 2003, Overdevest et al 2004, Pollock and Whitelaw 2005, Stepenuck and Green 2015, Peters et al 2015b. All of these benefits may lead to more effective community engagement with government in freshwater decision making.…”

Citizen-sensor-networks to confront government decision-makers: Two lessons from the Netherlands

“…Recently, Stepenuck and Green (2015) have studied when and how instances of volunteer environmental monitoring leads to impacts on individual and community level. Their article gives a state of the art overview of research on this topic, with an extensive literature analysis and evaluation of advancements in this field.…”

“…She calls for research on questions around the experience and changing values of participants in voluntary (biological) monitoring and the conditions required for empowerment in relation to participatory environmental governance. In our research, coming from a background in participatory planning and GIS, we have not studied the literature on environmental monitoring in-depth as Stepenuck and Green (2015) have, but rather, we have looked at cases in planning practice where we have seen citizens taking initiatives to gather information. We have analyzed to what extent, and how, those citizen-initiated practices have influenced decision-making processes on the level of governance and collective action.…”