Motivation and support services in citizen science insect monitoring: A cross-country study

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The design and successful performance of citizen science-based monitoring require an understanding of the motivation and the needs of participants. Herem we use a questionnaire to assess intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and investigate in links between project support service and motivations in 181 participants taking part in three insect-focused citizen science projects in Denmark, Germany and Israel. Across all three countries, main intrinsic motivation for participating in the projects were “to have fun” and to “do something (good) for nature”. Equally important across all countries were extrinsic motivations such as “contribute to science” and “contribute to nature conservation”. Interestingly, differences in the projects (country or program-type) were more strongly related to respondent's motivation than demographic variables such as age and gender. Linking project support services to participants' intrinsic and extrinsic motivations revealed that the intrinsic motivation of “feeling a part of the community” as well as the extrinsic motivation “learning” and the service to provide “training on insect identification” were positively related. Interestingly, the support service of “monetary incentives” was negatively related with the motivation to “conserve species generally” and “conserve insects specifically”. We conclude, that early identification of the citizen scientists' motivation and the assessment of how motivations may change over time are important to foster successful and sustainable citizen science monitoring programs. International networks of (potentially similar) biodiversity monitoring schemes should consider differences in cultural background and citizen scientist's requirements, and accordingly tailor the projects designs to activate, train, and support participants according to their needs.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
Artikelnummer109325
TidsskriftBiological Conservation
Vol/bind263
Antal sider13
ISSN0006-3207
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2021

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
We express our sincere gratitude to all volunteers from Denmark, Israel and Germany for taking part in the projects investigated and in our survey. We thank lab members Josephine Schmidt, David Eichenberg and Volker Grescho from the UFZ/iDiv for project support. AB, AR, MM, OC, SH and GP received funding by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig of the German Research Foundation ( DFG-FZT 118 , 202548816 ). GP is further funded by the German Agency for Nature Protection via the VielFalterGarten project. OC acknowledges funding from The Israeli Lepidopterists Society and The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History . RRD was supported by the NSF (grant number 1319293 ). AT, CS and JL received funding from Aage V. Jensen Naturfond for the Danish Insectmobile project. AR has worked for this publication within the framework of the nationwide project on monitoring of biological diversity in agricultural landscapes (MonViA) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL).

Funding Information:
We express our sincere gratitude to all volunteers from Denmark, Israel and Germany for taking part in the projects investigated and in our survey. We thank lab members Josephine Schmidt, David Eichenberg and Volker Grescho from the UFZ/iDiv for project support. AB, AR, MM, OC, SH and GP received funding by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig of the German Research Foundation (DFG-FZT 118, 202548816). GP is further funded by the German Agency for Nature Protection via the VielFalterGarten project. OC acknowledges funding from The Israeli Lepidopterists Society and The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History. RRD was supported by the NSF (grant number 1319293). AT, CS and JL received funding from Aage V. Jensen Naturfond for the Danish Insectmobile project. AR has worked for this publication within the framework of the nationwide project on monitoring of biological diversity in agricultural landscapes (MonViA) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL).

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© 2021 The Authors

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