Sharing biodiversity data: citizen scientists’ concerns and motivations

Abstract

Citizen scientists play a pivotal role in providing necessary biodiversity data. To ensure the continued involvement of a strong volunteer base, insight into the concerns and motivations of voluntary recorders is crucial. This paper presents the findings of a largescale survey (N = 2193) among Dutch volunteer biodiversity recorders of diverse taxa, and focuses on three questions: what are the characteristics of these citizen scientists regarding their activities and socio-demographic background, what are their motivations for recording biodiversity, and what are their views on data sharing and ownership? Our findings show that a connection to, interest in and concern for nature are the most important motivations for biodiversity recorders. Volunteer recorders have high expectations regarding the impact of their data, both for their own learning as well as for science and management. Almost half the volunteers consider their data to be public goods, but this does not mean they support unconditional data sharing. Instead, the acceptability of data sharing with third parties seems strongly linked to the goals of the user. We discuss the implications of our findings for practitioners, such as the role of biology curricula and the importance of learning opportunities to redress the lack of younger volunteers. We argue that conceptualising volunteer recorders as data custodians rather than owners helps to Communicated by Peter Bridgewater.This article belongs to the Topical Collection: Biodiversity appreciation and engagement.Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article

Overcoming the challenges of public data archiving for citizen science biodiversity recording and monitoring schemes

“…The effort contributed is substantial. For example, in the UK, 85 national schemes collect biological records from over 70,000 recorders to cover 11,431 taxa (Pocock et al., ; Roy, Harding, Preston, & Roy, ), while some 15,000 recorders are active in the Netherlands (Ganzevoort et al., ) and 26,000 in France. Over 8,500 volunteers spend 171,000 hr per year monitoring UK abundance trends in 250 bird, 56 butterfly, and 20 mammal species (Way & Robinson, ).…”

“…Information about the attitudes and practice of biological recorders towards data sharing suggest they are variable. For example, only 12% of Dutch biological recorders support unconditional use of their data (Ganzevoort et al., ), although 83% of biological recorders in Scotland would be happy for biological records to be openly available (Wilson et al. in prep).…”

“…Many volunteers retain a sense of ownership of data they have submitted, particularly if significant investment was required, and will withhold them if they perceive those data may be used inappropriately (Ellis & Waterton, ; Ganzevoort et al., ). The provision of data by citizen scientists to organizations undertaking biological recording or monitoring is underpinned by trust (Martin, Christidis, & Pecl, ), which requires those organizations to take account of volunteer perspectives when making decisions about data sharing, and to be open about potential data uses (Ganzevoort et al., ; Groom et al., ). Given the variable attitudes and practices towards open data outlined above, mandatory PDA of high‐resolution biological records has the potential to disrupt that relationship for some, and could result in a variable proportion of volunteers ceasing to submit data, creating a smaller, biased, dataset.…”

“…In a biodiversity context, citizen science has a long history, stemming from personal interests, enjoyment of, and concern for, nature (Ganzevoort, van den Born, Halffman, & Turnhout, 2017;Lawrence & Turnhout, 2010). As the insights to be gained from such pursuits have been realized, they have become increasingly coordinated by professionals (Pocock, Roy, Preston, & Roy, 2015).…”

“…recorders to cover 11,431 taxa (Pocock et al, 2015;Roy, Harding, Preston, & Roy, 2014), while some 15,000 recorders are active in the Netherlands (Ganzevoort et al, 2017) and 26,000 in France.…”