Citizen science enables community involvement in research. In addition to generating data about marine ecosystems, many marine citizen science programs aim to foster marine citizenship. Citizen science events may provide entry points for marine citizenship, but there are little data available to inform how to communicate about, and design citizen science experiences to maximize engagement.
Study 1. Promoting citizen science events
We examined whether messages about citizen science increases intentions to engage in citizen science, using a representative community sample. Participants randomly received either (i) a message about local marine citizen science or (ii) a control message. Most participants had not heard of citizen science (89.8%). Providing information about citizen science led to an increase in: likelihood of attending a citizen science event, seeking information, and willingness to share information with others, but that these effects were only observed in political liberals. These findings suggest that effectiveness of typical messages about marine citizen science may be limited to those with shared values.
Study 2. Impact of citizen science events
We surveyed individuals after attending one of seventeen ReefBlitz events. Half of participants (51%) reported intentions to adopt a new conservation behavior. Key elements of the citizen science experience associated with new behavioural intentions were learning about actions (procedural learning), and experiencing negative emotions about environmental problems. Importantly, factual learning was associated with reduced behavioural intentions. When designing citizen science programs, these findings suggest highlighting environmental impacts while providing meaningful experiences and building stewardship skills, to maximize marine citizenship outcomes.
Topics: Communicating marine conservation , Topics: Participation in marine conservation science (e.g. citizen and indigenous science) , Topics: The marine conservation community
