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Short Abstract

In CoFish we engaged Lake Geneva fishers and scientists to co-design research related to study the sustainability of fish. We studied the societal outcomes which reveal community empowerment, gains in procedural and content knowledge and self efficacy, but not motivation or epistemic knowledge.

Abstract

CoFish was a co-designed citizen science project (2021-2024) where we engaged with Lake Geneva commercial fishers, anglers and scientists in order to co-design a project on the sustainability of lake fish populations. In response to fishers’ concerns about declining fish populations, we conducted 4 monitoring campaigns to measure the spatial variability of lake phosphorus. We were further interested in investigating the societal and more specifically the learning outcomes of fishers. We conducted interviews with 10 fishers at the start and end of their participation in the project to capture the diversity of societal outcomes. We analysed the data using the Action framework (Passani et al. 2022) and report a gain in community empowerment.

We further analysed the learning outcomes using the OECD PISA Science framework (2025) and found a gain in procedural knowledge, particularly in the way they communicate about science as well as changes in self efficacy. The nature of their discourse when talking about science changed from mainly focusing on tacit knowledge to including more factual content knowledge. Unsurprisingly, there were no major changes in motivation as participants were already highly motivated to participate. There was a slight decrease in their epistemic knowledge indicating the complex nature of learning.

We summarise the societal outcomes in a submission to a disciplinary ecology journal to highlight the importance of capturing and reporting these outcomes. We hope to discuss different frameworks and challenges associated with capturing societal outcomes.