Who's &amp;#8220;hooting&amp;#8221;? Motivations and scientific attitudes of Manitoban citizen science owl surveyors

Ng, Christoph S.; Duncan, James R.; Koper, Nicola

doi:10.5751/ace-01265-130209

Cited by 10 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…The limited number of citizen science studies that have attempted to examine motivations of different groups of people have also focussed primarily on variation in motivations by age, finding again that younger participants are more likely to be motivated by Egoism motivations such as the potential to enhance their career or reputation (Alender 2016;Ng, Duncan, and Koper 2018), to learn new things (Asingizwe et al 2020), to have fun (Brouwer and Hessels 2019), and to learn about nature (Ganzevoort et al 2017), whereas older participants are more likely to have Values motivations such as wanting to contribute to science and to nature conservation (Ganzevoort et al 2017). A small number of studies have looked at other characteristics and have found that education level (Brouwer and Hessels 2019) and gender have some influence on motivations for participation (Jones et al 2018), whereas others have not found any association between demographic characteristics and motivations (Richter et al 2018).…”

Section: Variations In Motivations Between Demographic Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variations in the Motivations of Environmental Citizen Scientists

West

Dyke

Pateman

2021

Citizen Science: Theory and Practice

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Understanding motivations is important because appealing to and fulfilling motivations helps citizen science projects recruit and retain participants. We summarise the literature around motivations, drawing on key theories from volunteering more broadly and building on this with additional motivations identified in studies of citizen scientists. We also examine what is known about differences in motivations between demographic groups. We then report on a survey of 613 environmental citizen scientists in Great Britain; they were asked to select from a list of motivations derived from the literature. We used hierarchical cluster analysis to group respondents by types of motivations held. Two clusters were dominated by people holding Values motivations (concern for others or the environment), both of which had high proportions of older people and people identifying as from white ethnic groups. A third cluster included people with Egoism motivations (participating to learn something or further one's career) and Values motivations. This cluster had a higher proportion of some commonly underrepresented groups than the overall sample, including younger people, people identifying as from minority ethnic groups and people in lower socioeconomic groups. Two further clusters also had higher proportions of people from minority ethnic groups than the overall sample, one dominated by those who participated because they were asked to, and the other by people who held other motivations not in our list. We use insights on participant motivations from the literature and survey to make recommendations to those wishing to recruit and retain citizen scientists, particularly those from underrepresented groups.

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Section: Variations In Motivations Between Demographic Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variations in the Motivations of Environmental Citizen Scientists

West

Dyke

Pateman

2021

Citizen Science: Theory and Practice

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“…As shown in Figure 2b, there were no issues preventing participants from contributing to a CS initiative due to their gender, as both males and females were found to participate in the vast majority (97%) of CS initiatives. For example, a questionnaire developed to retrieve information regarding the motivations and scientific attitudes from past participants of the Manitoba Nocturnal Owl Survey revealed that "Respondents were fairly evenly split by gender" [57] (para. 15).…”

Section: Exclusion and Inclusion Demographic Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…"Interpersonal interactions and contributions to a conservation project were each described by 22% of respondents, followed by general enjoyment or "fun" (17%)" [57] (p. 5).…”

Section: %mentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Systematic Literature Review on the Participation Aspects of Environmental and Nature-Based Citizen Science Initiatives

Vasiliades

Hadjichambis

Paraskeva-Hadjichambi

et al. 2021

Sustainability

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It is commonly argued that, despite the tremendous resonance Citizen Science (CS) has shown in recent years, there is still lack of understanding of important aspects defining citizens’ participation and engagement in CS initiatives. While CS initiatives could provide a vehicle to foster forms of participation contributing to the democratization of science, there is still limited attention paid to the “Citizen” component of the Citizen Science term. For the purpose of this work, we systematically reviewed the available literature for empirical studies in respect to citizens’ participation in environmental and nature-based CS initiatives established during the last two decades, using the PRISMA methodology. The participatory facet of the retrieved 119 CS initiatives was analysed on the basis of: (a) exclusion and inclusion demographic factors, (b) CS models and practices, (c) facilitators and constraints of citizen’s participation, and (d) environmental citizenship. Our findings show that the majority of the CS initiatives did not place restrictions on gender participation; however, we have identified that mostly highly educated adults participated in the reviewed initiatives. In addition, most of the CS initiatives reported in the literature were situated in the EU and USA, were mostly limited to the local scale, and primarily followed the contributory model. Academic institutions were found to coordinate the majority of the CS initiatives examined. By using digital technologies, academic scientists were able to control and increase data quality, as well as to engage a broader audience, even though they were mostly treating volunteers as “data collectors”, desiring their long-term engagement. Therefore, it will be of CS benefit to be better aligned with the mentality and needs of citizens. In this direction CS initiatives should trigger citizens’ learning gains and interpersonal/social benefits and personal, environmental, and social motivations, but also to shift their goals towards contributing to science and citizens’ connection with nature. On the other hand, there is a need to overcome any design and implementation barriers, and to enhance democratization through a more participative engagement of active and aware citizens, thus promoting environmental citizenship.

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“…In addition, having the opportunity to be in nature was identified as a critical factor for participation in a Canadian community science program (Ng et al. 2018 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Influence of the COVID‐19 Pandemic on Volunteer Water Monitoring Programs in the United States and Canada

Stepenuck

Carr²

2022

J American Water Resour Assoc

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Volunteer water monitoring programs generate new scientific knowledge, contribute data to decision‐making processes, and increase social networks, technical knowledge, and skills of participants. Declaration of the COVID‐19 pandemic threatened the ability of these programs to continue to engage volunteers to achieve such outcomes. A national water monitoring network hosted a brainstorming webinar to facilitate communication across programs to identify potential solutions to pandemic‐influenced challenges. Following that webinar, a survey of United States and Canadian volunteer monitoring programs that was conducted about 3 months into the pandemic revealed that 72% of 80 responding programs planned to carry on through the 2020 field season despite most having experienced delayed starts. Other common program modifications implemented in the first months of the pandemic included adding COVID‐19 safety information to program guidance, changing field team composition, monitoring timing and logistics, and adopting new communications strategies. Most programs reported loss or anticipated loss in number of data observations (74%) and volunteers (66%), while 44% reported known or anticipated losses in funding. Seventeen percent of responding programs were able to swiftly develop distance learning tools to train participants, which led to increased program capacity to reach broader audiences.

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Who's “hooting”? Motivations and scientific attitudes of Manitoban citizen science owl surveyors

Cited by 10 publications

References 28 publications

Variations in the Motivations of Environmental Citizen Scientists

Variations in the Motivations of Environmental Citizen Scientists

A Systematic Literature Review on the Participation Aspects of Environmental and Nature-Based Citizen Science Initiatives

Early Influence of the COVID‐19 Pandemic on Volunteer Water Monitoring Programs in the United States and Canada

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