Dataset for: Attitudes toward engagement in Citizen Science increase self-related, ecology-related, and motivation-related outcomes in an urban wildlife project

Citizen Science (CS) projects play a crucial role in engaging citizens in conservation efforts. While implicitly mostly considered as an outcome of CS participation, citizens may also have a certain attitude toward engagement in CS when starting to participate in a CS project. Moreover, there is a lack of CS studies that consider changes over longer periods of time. Therefore, this research presents two-wave data from four field studies of a CS project about urban wildlife ecology using cross-lagged panel analyses. We investigated the influence of attitudes toward engagement in CS on self-related, ecology-related, and motivation-related outcomes. We found that positive attitudes toward engagement in CS at the beginning of the CS project had positive influences on participants’ psychological ownership and pride in their participation, their attitudes toward and enthusiasm about wildlife, and their internal and external motivation two months later. We discuss the implications for CS research and practice.