Changes in participant behaviour and attitudes are associated with knowledge and skills gained by using a turtle conservation citizen science app

Citizen science has become a popular way to collect biodiversity data and engage the wider public in scientific research. It has the potential to improve the knowledge and skills of participants, and positively change their behaviour and attitude towards the environment. Citizen science outcomes are particularly valuable for wildlife conservation, as they could help alleviate human impacts on the environment. We used an online questionnaire to investigate the consequences of participating in an Australian turtle mapping app, TurtleSAT, on skills and knowledge gain, and test for any association between these gains with behavioural or attitudinal changes reported by the participants. 148 citizen scientists completed our questionnaire, mostly from the states of New South Wales and Victoria. Participants listed TurtleSAT as the third most common source of knowledge about turtle ecology and conservation, after a talk about turtles and personal observations/research. Citizen scientists who participated more often were more knowledgeable about turtles than infrequent users. Self-reported gains in knowledge and skills were positively linked to attitudinal and behavioural changes, such as being more aware of turtles on roads. However, behaviour and attitude changes were not related to participation rate. Respondents also reported that after learning about the current decline in turtle populations, they adopted several turtle-friendly practices, such as habitat restoration or moving turtles out of harm’s way, underlining the importance of increasing people’s awareness on species declines. The reported changes in attitudes and behaviours are likely to positively impact the conservation of Australian freshwater turtles. Engagement with citizen science projects like TurtleSAT may result in participants being more interested in the natural world, by learning more about it and being more exposed to it, and therefore contribute more actively to its protection.
Methods
The dataset was collected through an online questionnaire. We built our questionnaire on the REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) online system (Harris et al. 2009), which was hosted by The University of Sydney. Anyone who uploaded at least one sighting to TurtleSAT was invited to answer our questionnaire. We recruited respondents by advertising our questionnaire on the TurtleSAT social media channels, and by sending two e-mails to all TurtleSAT participants that provided their e-mail address upon registration to the project (University of Sydney Human Ethics approval 2017/981). The two e-mails were sent 11 months apart to maximise recruitment. Informed consent was obtained from all participants. The questionnaire was available online from the 7th of June 2018 to the 11th September 2019, and was anonymous.

The dataset has been cleaned up and processed using MS Excel, and any identifiers or variables not used in this study were removed.