Search

We present and exemplify the potential of the long-term community science (= citizen science) project StadtWildTiere (German for 'urban wildlife') in a transnational context. StadtWildTiere gathers opportunistic sightings of urban wildlife to raise awareness of, increase knowledge of, and promote biodiversity in urban areas across Central Europe. Transnationally similar methodologies enable direct comparisons concerning occurrence, distribution, and trends of urban wildlife populations and allow for new insights into and potential conservation and management measures of these otherwise unmonitored wildlife populations. We advocate the use and promotion for such community-based science projects, which align with the guiding principles of awareness, knowledge, and action. Such projects should whenever possible connect with similar initiatives in other countries to benefit from comparisons and get a strong impact on a transnational level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizen science projects are crucial for engaging citizens in conservation efforts. Although attitudes toward engagement in citizen science were mostly considered an outcome of citizen science participation, citizens may also have a certain attitude toward engagement in citizen science when starting with a citizen science project. Moreover, there is a lack of citizen science studies that consider changes over longer periods of time. Therefore, in this research, we present two-wave data from four field studies of a citizen science project about urban wildlife ecology using cross-lagged panel analyses. We investigated the influence of attitudes toward engagement in citizen science on self-related, ecology-related, and motivation-related outcomes. We found that positive attitudes toward engagement in citizen science at the beginning of the project had positive influences on the participants' psychological ownership and pride in their participation, their attitudes toward and enthusiasm about wildlife, and their internal and external motivation 2 months later. We discuss the implications for citizen science research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, citizens collaborate increasingly with scientists in citizen science (CS) projects on environmental issues. CS projects often have educational goals and aim to increase citizens' knowledge with the ultimate goal of fostering positive attitudes toward science. To date, little is known about the extent to which CS projects strengthen the positive interrelationship between knowledge and attitudes. Based on previous research, it has been suggested that the knowledge–attitude relationship could be further examined by focusing on different aspects: (1) different attitudinal domains, (2) topic‐specific knowledge, and (3) its direction. Our study contributes to the clarification of the interrelation between scientific knowledge and attitudes toward science within the specific domain of urban wildlife ecology using cross‐lagged panel analyses. We collected survey data on five attitudinal domains, topic‐specific knowledge, scientific reasoning abilities, and epistemological beliefs from N = 303 participants before and after they participated in a CS project on urban wildlife ecology. Participants collected and analyzed data on terrestrial mammals in a German metropolitan city. Our results provide evidence for the relationship between knowledge and attitudes due to the topic‐specificity of knowledge in CS projects (e.g., wildlife ecology). Our method provided a rigorous assessment of the direction of the knowledge–attitude relationship and showed that topic‐specific knowledge was a predictor of more positive attitudes toward science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]