New publication on increasing trust through citizen science

The authors analyse trust in three international case studies from the environmental sciences. In particular, initiatives initiated or managed by citizen scientists themselves ("bottom-up") were at the centre of the research. As citizen science is increasingly being used for issues relating to biodiversity, climate change and environmental protection, but at the same time environmental policy is sometimes ideologically divided, trust is a particularly important factor here.

The authors derive recommendations as to which cognitive and affective indicators of trust need to be taken into account in research and evidence-based environmental policy. Otherwise, citizen science could even diminish trust.

The entire article is available online.

A. Skarlatidou, M. Haklay, S. Hoyte, M. van Oudheusden, I.Bishop, How can bottom-up citizen science restore public trust in environmental governance and sciences? Recommendations from three case studies, Environmental Science & Policy, Volume 160, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2024.103854