Sharing biodiversity data: citizen scientists’ concerns and motivations

Citizen scientists play a pivotal role in providing necessary biodiversity data. To ensure the continued involvement of a strong volunteer base, insight into the concerns and motivations of voluntary recorders is crucial. This paper presents the findings of a large-scale survey ( N = 2193) among Dutch volunteer biodiversity recorders of diverse taxa, and focuses on three questions: what are the characteristics of these citizen scientists regarding their activities and socio-demographic background, what are their motivations for recording biodiversity, and what are their views on data sharing and ownership? Our findings show that a connection to, interest in and concern for nature are the most important motivations for biodiversity recorders. Volunteer recorders have high expectations regarding the impact of their data, both for their own learning as well as for science and management. Almost half the volunteers consider their data to be public goods, but this does not mean they support unconditional data sharing. Instead, the acceptability of data sharing with third parties seems strongly linked to the goals of the user. We discuss the implications of our findings for practitioners, such as the role of biology curricula and the importance of learning opportunities to redress the lack of younger volunteers. We argue that conceptualising volunteer recorders as data custodians rather than owners helps to understand their perspective on data sharing, and emphasize the importance of clear and transparent data policy that respects volunteers’ views on their data.