PONE-D-23-34026What defines a citizen scientist and influences their sustained participation in an agronomic project?PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Vanden Berghen,

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This is an interesting paper which deals with an important issue: namely the determinants sustained of citizen engagement in citizen science activities in relation to agronomy. However, reviewer 1 has s have indicated that there issues in relation to methodological clarity which need to be addressed, recommending major revision. Reviewer 2 has also raised some minor concerns to be addressed,

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[The authors thank all volunteers, including those candidates who were not admitted to the project, for their enthusiasm to take part in the citizen science project and the collection of the survey and garden data. We also thank all partners and co-researchers on the project: VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology (Prof. Sofie Goormachtig, Prof. Steven Maere, Dr. Stien Mertens, Dr. Lena Vlaminck, Dr. Sonia Garcia Mendez, Alexander Clarysse), ILVO (Prof. Isabel Roldán-Ruiz, Dr. Joke Pannecoucque, Margo Vermeersch, Koen Van Loo), Ghent University (Prof. Anne Willems, Helena Van den Eynde, Ilse de Baenst, Prof. Caroline De Tender), VIB-KU Leuven (Prof. Jan Michiels, Serge Beullens), VIB HQ (Dr. Astrid Gadeyne, Dr. Laurien Van Dyck, Merlijn Vanhecke, Teknorix), MijnTuinlab, Bodemkundige Dienst van België. The ‘Soy in 1000 Gardens’ project (GC03-C02) has received funding from the Grand Challenges Program of VIB, which received support from the Flemish Government under the Management Agreement 2017-2021 (VR 2016 2312 Doc.1521/4).]

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  [L.V received funding for the research through the 'Soy in 1000 Garden Project'. B.V.B. was employed through this funding. The ‘Soy in 1000 Gardens’ project (GC03-C02) was funded by the Grand Challenges Program of VIB, which received support from the Flemish Government under the Management Agreement 2017-2021 (VR 2016 2312 Doc.1521/4).

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Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Dr Bergen

Many thanks for submitting your MS to PLOS One I have now received 2 reviews of your paper,

This is an interesting paper which deals with an important issue: namely the determinants sustained of citizen engagement in citizen science activities in relation to agronomy. However, reviewer 1 has s have indicated that there issues in relation to methodological clarity which need to be addressed, recommending major revision. If you are able to address these comments, and those of reviewer 2, please submit a revised MS and cover letter detailing changes, revisions and authors' responses for further consideration for publication in this journal

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Thank you for sharing the manuscript “What defines a citizen scientist and influences their sustained participation in an agronomic project?” with me. It presents original research on the personal variables that influence initial and sustained participation in an agricultural citizen science project. While the research design seems quite rigorous to me, the manuscripts’ claims how it extends previous research need to be substantiated. I have identified some gaps that concern the theoretical framing of the study and the robustness of the selection mechanism claimed (i.e., unidentified factors on behalf of the selecting project managers).

Introduction and Significance

In my view, how this study contribute to theory development is not yet clear for the following reasons, even though studies on the influence of motivation on initial and ongoing participation in citizen science are still relevant.

(1) The contribution of the study would be much clearer if you summarized the state of research on all constructs’ influences on participation, i.e. of knowledge, intention, concerns, values (and not only on motivation). What is the exact research gap related to motivation, knowledge, etc. in the context of initial and ongoing participation? Just stating that “how this [i.e. participation decision] relates to their personal characteristics […] is not entirely clear” (lines 63ff.) seems quite vague to me.

(2) The contribution to previous research would also be clearer if all personal characteristics could be located within a common theoretical framework. For this purpose, the representation of person characteristics in Figure 3 would have to be derived from the literature. Why are values and motivation equated here (in contrast to West and colleagues, 2021, for example)? Motivation can be based on values, but why should a value directly motivate me to act? Up to now, the personal characteristics seem to be a loose bundle that can not be subsumed under the umbrella term “motivations”.

In addition, the so-called project pipeline could be presented in a more differentiated way with reference to the relevant literature, from recruitment to initial participation to ongoing participation. Questions could be asked about who from the “general population” was not reached, who was reached but did not participate, who participated but did not follow through to the end, etc.

Methods

A possibly central problem with the procedure is that the selection model is supposed to predict self-selection on the basis of personal characteristics, although the selection was also made by the project managers (see lines 121f., 300). Could you substantiate that the selection models are nevertheless suitable?

The strengths of the constructs surveyed are that the individual scales are theory-based and have (largely) already been used in previous research. However, in my view, there is a lack of details on how the items were aggregated into scales: How did you, for example, aggregate the knowledge scales and why did you not calculate a CFA for the knowledge scales? How did you ensure that the items only load on the respective subscale and not on other subscales (if a one-factor model CFA is calculated for each subscale)? From my point of view, it is theoretically unfounded that all the scales surveyed are referred to as motivations (knowledge is not a motivation).

I cannot judge whether you adequately implemeted the Heckman model. However, it seems to me that the use of motivation as a variable that “affects why individuals may select to participate in study but does not influence the outcome variable” requires additional justifications (lines 352f.). First, why do you think that a t-test is an adequate measure for choosing the VFI variable and when do you consider the influence of a variable as small enough to not influence the outcome variable? Second, why did you differentiate between “end” and “partly” participants for the t-test while the selection models account for “Entry completion”, “Final step”, and “End”? I would either expect further t-tests to exclude influences on these groups, or only the two-step model with the “End” variable to be tested. Third, the well-documented influence of motivation in previous research speaks against the selection of the VFI variable (e.g., West et al., 2021), even if no differences between the groups were found in this study.

Please, make sure to share your data, for example, with your article in the repository of PLOS ONE.

Results and Claims

From a more formal point of view, the results are lacking important information. Please consider whether you would like to follow any reporting guideline (such as CROSS; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481359/bin/11606_2021_6737_MOESM1_ESM.docx). Following such guidelines, you should include information on the estimates in the tables (means, standard deviations in Tables 4 and 5, coefficients in Table 6, etc.). For difference tests, the results should include an effect size (and confidence intervals). For the selection models, the results should include information on the model fit.

You state that the models correct for “non-randomly/self-selected” sample (lines 410f.). Could you include some estimate of the correction, especially in the light of missing information about influencing variables other than the included ones? That might be informative for other research to underline the importance of corrections. Furthermore, in the introduction, the selection mechanism should be clarified with regard to the literature (e.g., Nibble and drop framework; Fischer et al., 2020). Then, please consistently refer to either non-random or self-selection throughout the manuscript.

In my opinion, the discussion of the results falls short of the potential. This is also because the results are not discussed in sufficient detail against the background of the literature. The manuscript by Füchslin and colleagues (2019) offers a starting point for identifying further studies on selection factors. For example, with regard to knowledge as a variable, you could discuss whether, as in many other studies, the level of education also comes into play here (as the level of education and knowledge correlate at least to a certain extent).

Especially, for the two-step selection models, you should consider to further substantiate how your results extend previous research. Which influences from sustainable participation described in the literature persist or even disappear if selection is taken into account? Are there also influences that are reversed?

You might also want to discuss how reliable the results are if they are influenced by selection factors that lie outside the participant. Are there selection factors on behalf of the projects managers, either explicit to achieve a balanced sample or implicit biases? Furthermore, I could not find a Limitations section that could emphasize the strengths of the research approach but should also highlight the weaknesses.

Style and Language

The manuscript is well written and in fluent English, if one disregards some minor typos in the text and the tables (e.g., missing asterisk in Table 6). Please, check carefully the text again. Furthermore, it is of utmost importance that the manuscript coherently designates the constructs and variables examined in order to increase comprehensibility.

The title does not yet capture the contribution of the study, from my point of view: The manuscript does not define what a citizen science is, but what citizens’ characteristics sets sustained participation apart from initial participation.

Table 6 is not reader friendly because of the line breaks. Each variable should be in a single line.

The reporting of decimals should be reconsidered according to guidelines such as by the American Psychological Association (7th Edition): “… means and standard deviations for data measured on integer scales (e.g., surveys and questionnaires) to one decimal”; “other means and standard deviations and correlations, proportions, and inferential statistics (t, F, chi-square) to two decimals.” (https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/numbers-statistics-guide.pdf)

Literature

Fischer, H., Cho, H., & Storksdieck, M. (2021). Going Beyond Hooked Participants: The Nibble and- Drop Framework for Classifying Citizen Science Participation. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 6(1), 10. https://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.350

Füchslin, T., Schafer, M. S., & Metag, J. (2019). Who wants to be a citizen scientist? Identifying the potential of citizen science and target segments in Switzerland. Public Understanding of Science, 28(6), 652-668. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662519852020

West, S., Dyke, A., & Pateman, R. (2021). Variations in the Motivations of Environmental Citizen Scientists. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 6(1), Article 14. https://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.370

Reviewer #2: This manuscript presents a very comprehensible study with an important research question, a clear and clever research design, and interesting and convincing results. Accordingly, I don’t have any comments worth mentioning about the study itself.

What I’m not really satisfied with yet, on the other hand, are the introductory reflections on the role of people’s motivations and reasons to engage in Citizen Science – and their motivation then actually to maintain their commitment to a CS project. There is ample and recent research that the authors should check out for improving their introduction and that they should compare their own findings to in their discussion section:

Greving and colleagues, for example, have identified several relevant psychological factors of influence for CS participants. There is research on the influence of psychological ownership on pride in a Citizen Science project on wildlife ecology. There are also findings that show that CS participants attitudes toward engagement in Citizen Science increase self-related, ecology-related, and motivation-related outcomes in an urban wildlife project.

Moreover, CS participation had an impact on attitudes and knowledge in a Citizen Science project about urban bat ecology. Finally, in lab studies it was also found that people’s compassion is relevant for CS participation.

Considering these previous findings and positioning their own research more thoroughly in the existing literature would benefit the authors’ presentation of their study. This could strengthen their line of argument and, in particular, could help them better justify their selection of relevant variables.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Till Bruckermann

Reviewer #2: No

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Citizen scientists: unveiling motivations and characteristics influencing initial and sustained participation in an agricultural project

PONE-D-23-34026R1

Dear Dr. Van den Berghen

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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