The DOI matches its Crossref record; 2 of the 2 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Leveraging the power of place in citizen science for effective conservation decision making
Open accessAbstract
Many citizen science projects are place-based - built on in-person participation and motivated by local conservation. When done thoughtfully, this approach to citizen science can transform humans and their environment. Despite such possibilities, many projects struggle to meet decision-maker needs, generate useful data to inform decisions, and improve social-ecological resilience. Here, we define leveraging the ‘power of place’ in citizen science, and posit that doing this improves conservation decision making, increases participation, and improves community resilience. First, we explore ‘place’ and identify five place dimensions: social-ecological, narrative and name-based, knowledge-based, emotional and affective, and performative. We then thematically analyze 134 case studies drawn from CitSci.org ( n = 39), The Stewardship Network New England (TSN-NE; n = 39), and Earthwatch ( n = 56) regarding: (1) use of place dimensions in materials (as one indication of leveraging the power of place), (2) intent for use of data in decision-making, and (3) evidence of such use. We find that 89% of projects intend for data to be used, 46% demonstrate no evidence of use, and 54% provide some evidence of use. Moreover, projects used in decision making leverage more ( t = − 4.8, df = 117; p < 0.001) place dimensions ( x ̅ = 3.0; s = 1.4) than those not used in decision making ( x ̅ = 1.8; s = 1.2). Further, a Principal Components Analysis identifies three related components (aesthetic, narrative and name-based, and social-ecological). Given these findings, we present a framework for leveraging place in citizen science projects and platforms, and recommend approaches to better impart intended outcomes. We discuss place in citizen science related to relevance, participation, resilience, and scalability and conclude that effective decision making as a means towards more resilient and sustainable communities can be strengthened by leveraging the power of place in citizen science.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Answering the Call for a Standard Reliability Measure for Coding Data
Hayes, A. F., & Krippendorff, K. (2007) · Communication Methods and Measures · doi:10.1080/19312450709336664 · Cited by 4,225 · cited 1×
“We calculated Krippendorff's alpha using the “kalpha” macro in SPSS for the independently coded 30 project subsample (Hayes and Krippendorff, 2007 - www.afhayes. com/public/kalpha.pdf).”
MethodScale and Cross-Scale Dynamics: Governance and Information in a Multilevel World
Cash, D. W., Adger, W. N., Berkes, F., Garden, P., Lebel, L., Olsson, P., Pritchard, L., & Young, O. (2006) · Ecology and Society · doi:10.5751/es-01759-110208 · Cited by 2,254
Cited by
The science of citizen science: Exploring barriers to use as a primary research tool
Burgess, H. K., DeBey, L. B., Froehlich, H. E., Schmidt, N., Theobald, E. J., Ettinger, A. K., HilleRisLambers, J., Tewksbury, J., & Parrish, J. K. (2017) · Biological Conservation · doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2016.05.014 · Cited by 389
Allf, B. C., Cooper, C. B., Larson, L. R., Dunn, R. R., Futch, S. E., Sharova, M., & CAVALIER, D. (2022) · BioScience · doi:10.1093/biosci/biac035 · Cited by 74
A framework for contextualizing social‐ecological biases in contributory science data
Carlen, E. J., Estien, C. O., Caspi, T., Perkins, D., Goldstein, B. R., Kreling, S. E. S., Hentati, Y., Williams, T. D., Stanton, L. A., Des Roches, S., et al. (2024) · People and Nature · doi:10.1002/pan3.10592 · Cited by 57
Using citizen science data to monitor the Sustainable Development Goals: a bottom-up analysis
Ballerini, L., & Bergh, S. I. (2021) · Sustainability Science · doi:10.1007/s11625-021-01001-1 · Cited by 43
Metadata
- Authors
- Newman, G., Chandler, M., Clyde, M., McGreavy, B., Haklay, M., Ballard, H., Gray, S., Scarpino, R., Hauptfeld, R., Mellor, D., & Gallo, J.
- Venue
- Biological Conservation
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2017-04
- Volume
- 208
- Pages
- 55-64
- ISSN
- 0006-3207 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2509089500
- Cited by
- 184
- References
- 2
- FWCI
- 37.20
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Leveraging the power of place in citizen science for effective conservation decision making. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.biocon.2016.07.019
- The paper
- Newman, G., Chandler, M., Clyde, M., McGreavy, B., Haklay, M., Ballard, H., Gray, S., Scarpino, R., Hauptfeld, R., Mellor, D., & Gallo, J. (2017). Leveraging the power of place in citizen science for effective conservation decision making. Biological Conservation. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2016.07.019
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
