Is citizen science worth it? Economic decision making of natural resource managers

Abstract

Citizen science, or public participation in scientific research, is often used by natural resource management agencies for monitoring. Citizen science has been studied for its effects on volunteer education, community engagement, data rigor, and cost savings. This thesis researches the cost savings of citizen science projects by comparing three citizen science projects to equivalent professional projects, and by analyzing the methodology of implementation of three citizen science case studies. It found that the citizen science projects studied are not notably cheaper than their professional counterparts but are lauded for their benefits of education, community engagement, and stewardship. For the case studies, supervised data collection and on-the-job training were found to have higher variable costs, while unsupervised data collection and training prior to data collection was found to have higher fixed costs. The findings of this thesis might aid resource managers in deciding if citizen science is an appropriate monitoring tool for their resource.