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Short Abstract

We will present a new innovative evaluation tool for formally assessing citizen science cost-benefit, and show how it was applied to a portfolio of 14 marine citizen science projects, to support discussions about investment in citizen science.

Abstract

Recognising the multiple is important to fully understand the value of citizen science. By understanding the range of potential benefits of citizen science, project leaders can plan projects to achieve these multiple outcomes, and citizen science can be more fully valued by funders and decision-makers. However, in project evaluations of citizen science, formal consideration of the costs and benefits is often missing. We develop a tool for evaluation costs and benefits of citizen science and applied it to a case study of 14 marine citizen science projects in the UK (open water to benthic and coastal, and habitats, biodiversity and litter). The imputs to the tool were: monetary value of benefits (value of the time volunteered and benefits for health and wellbeing, and education and skills, albeit hard to quantify in monetary terms), costs for delivering the project, the cost of the alternative (to acheive the same goals), non-monetised risks and benefits. We found that: (1) citizen science requires investment (in our cases, typically costing EUR14-26 per volunteer hour); (2) many projects receive substantial in-kind investment (in our cases, typically covering 75% of the costs); (3) when considering the monetary costs and benefits, citizen science is typically net positive (in our cases, to the value of EUR5 per volunteer hour); (4) our respondents felt that the non-monetised risks and benefits were important and when they were included (in our cases) citizen science was typically twice as preferred as an alternative. Although our specific results should be treated with caution, the use of this framework provides a formal way of including these aspects in discussions with funders and decision-makers to help build the case for supporting and upscaling a sustainable portfolio of citizen science.