Motivations of citizen contributors for participating in an Izu Islands bird survey in which participants are given opportunities to communicate with managers

Abstract

In conservation science, citizen science enables long-term and large-scale monitoring. All stakeholders in a citizen science project need to derive benefit from the project for it to continue; however, benefits to participating citizens are generally non-economic and difficult to evaluate. In this study, we used questionnaires and interviews to focus on participant motivation (i.e. expected benefit) for a bird survey project conducted in the Izu Islands, Japan. Most participants who attended came from off the island, and the project was conducted as volunteer tourism. In questionnaires, a high percentage of participants cited "fascinating ecosystem in the islands", suggesting their motivation was based on tourism, and "sympathized with the objective of the project" suggesting a motivation to perform voluntary work. The next most popular responses were "learning survey methods and studying bird ecology", "fun to survey" and "contribution to science" as citizen scientists. Usual human relationships such as "to make friends" and "recommendation from friends" were not important motivators.