EAGER: Determinants of citizen science participation and data quality in coastal water quality monitoring

越来越多地采用基于公民科学的方法来监测环境质量。本研究旨在了解公民科学志愿者的哪些特征将预测他们在这类研究中的有效和长期参与。随着人们对公民科学潜在利益的兴趣日益浓厚，人们越来越关注技术工具，以确保高质量的参与和数据有效性。就水质监测而言，所监测环境的健康和质量可能对志愿人员本身的使用产生非常真实的影响。更好地了解志愿者的动机、承诺或能力，可以产生比技术方法更简单、更可靠的战略（包括研究设计或参与者招募和培训），以确保数据的有效性。通过对沿海水质监测项目参与者的探索性研究，本项目将检验这样一个假设，即公民科学参与者对他们自愿监测的资源有更多的归属感，他们将产生更可靠、有效的数据用于科学研究。本研究的混合方法设计借鉴并整合了当地生态知识、地方依恋、和基于公民科学的环境监测。在这样做的过程中，拟议的工作解决了关于公民科学家参与的有效性的知识方面的一个根本差距，公民科学收集的数据的质量受到公民科学家与他们自愿研究的环境资源的关系的影响。 本研究将利用公民志愿者绘制淡水羽流的空间范围从两个流域出口沿着中央海岸的加州：圣佩德罗溪和圣洛伦索河。这两个流域出口，排放毗邻受欢迎的海滩和冲浪点。在地中海气候的加州，城市和雨水径流是沿海海洋污染的最重要来源之一。与许多其他公民科学活动，招募志愿者完成研究任务在线，沿海水质监测公民科学计划提供的情况下，志愿者可能会亲自归属于研究的结果？也就是说，通过他们实际使用的地方或资源，或通过他们的健康和福祉。.这项拟议中的研究旨在通过测试这一假设来填补这一数据和知识空白，即参与者在他们自愿监测的资源中的归属感更强，将为公民科学项目贡献更可靠，更有效的数据。随着环境质量监测工作越来越依赖公民科学来收集数据，这些见解将为研究设计和志愿者招募和培训提供信息，并为公众参与和科学教育提供建议。预计这项研究的结果将为今后改进其他公民科学研究项目的设计和部署提供可操作的建议。

Citizen science-based approaches to monitoring environmental quality are increasingly being deployed. This study seeks to understand what characteristics of citizen science volunteers will predict their effective and long-term participation in this type of study. Growing interest in the potential benefits of citizen science has been accompanied by an increasing focus on technological tools to ensure high quality participation and data validity. In the case of water quality monitoring, the health and quality of the environment being monitored could have very real implications for its use by the volunteers themselves. Better knowledge of the motivations of volunteers, commitments, or abilities could lead to simpler, more reliable strategies (including study design or participant recruitment and training) for ensuring data validity than a technological approach might. Through an exploratory study of participants in a coastal water quality monitoring program, this project will test the hypothesis that citizen science participants, who are more vested in the resource they volunteer to monitor, will generate more reliable, valid data for use in scientific research.This study's mixed method design draws upon and integrates diverse theoretical literatures on local ecological knowledge, place attachment, and citizen science-based environmental monitoring. In so doing, the proposed work addresses a fundamental gap in knowledge about the effectiveness of the participation of citizen scientists and the quality of their data collected by citizen science is influenced by the citizen scientists' relationship to the environmental resource they volunteer to study. The present study will use citizen volunteers to map the spatial extent of freshwater plumes from two watershed outlets along the central coast of California: San Pedro Creek and San Lorenzo River. Both watershed outlets, discharge adjacent to popular beaches and surf spots. In the Mediterranean climate of California, urban and stormwater runoff represents one of the most important sources of pollution to the coastal ocean. Unlike many other citizen science activities that recruit volunteers to complete research tasks online, coastal water quality monitoring citizen science programs provide for the circumstance in which volunteers may be personally vested in the findings of the research?that is, through their physical use of the place or resource or through their health and wellbeing. . This proposed research seeks to fill this data and knowledge gap by testing the hypothesis that participants who are more vested in the resource they volunteer to monitor will contribute more reliable, valid data to citizen science projects. As environmental quality monitoring efforts increasingly rely on citizen science to collect data, these insights will inform study design and volunteer recruitment and training, as well as suggest approaches for public engagement with and education in science generally. It is anticipated that findings from this study will lead to actionable recommendations for improving the design and deployment of other citizen science-based research projects in the future.