Citizen science participant motivations and behaviour: Implications for biodiversity data coverage

Increasingly, citizen science data are becoming a significant source of information on the distribution of biodiversity. Their value is affected by many biases, especially gaps and redundancies in citizen science data. Reducing or minimizing those biases remains an important task, with an important first step being an understanding of whether, and to what extent, participants are willing to alter their behaviour for the benefit of a project. We surveyed participants of a popular citizen science project focused on frog biodiversity to understand how their motivations and behaviour relate to their willingness to change when and where they collect data. Most respondents contributed seasonally and close to home. Both their motivations and interest in changing behaviour strongly aligned with the project aims: conserving frogs and contributing to science. Willingness to change behaviour varied little with reported motivations, and respondents displayed a high level of willingness to change when or where they collect data when presented with opportunities for less biased sampling. Our results indicate there is interest among participants to sample biodiversity in a more meaningful way, potentially reducing some biases in how citizen science data are collected. Creating citizen science projects that encourage participants to collect optimal data may satisfy both participant and organizers' goals, and work towards science-driven conservation with improved biodiversity data.