Evaluating the Social Health & Wellbeing Benefits of CaSTCo Citizen Science: Full report

Claiborn, Elle, Chivers, Charlotte-Anne ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5171-2484 and Peacock, Michael (2025) Evaluating the Social Health & Wellbeing Benefits of CaSTCo Citizen Science: Full report. Project Report. Zenodo.

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Abstract

Citizen science provides a range of benefits to participants. We explored this through three approaches: a review of the scientific literature, a survey of CaSTCo-trained volunteers, and a case study of the ‘photovoice’ methodology used by volunteers in the Wensum catchment, Norfolk. The scientific literature shows that there is a wide range of potential benefits from citizen science participation. These can be divided into: Increasing knowledge, skills and science capital; Benefitting health and wellbeing; Forming and strengthening meaning and connection; and Increasing empowerment by supporting the development of values, motivation and action. Evidence for these benefits can vary in quality, and further research is required to gather evidence for some benefits. For freshwater citizen science, the benefits often align well to the motivations of participants in being involved, which is likely to support greater recruitment and retention. Intentional design of citizen science is important to maximise the benefits for participants. Our survey was circulated to all CaSTCo-trained volunteers. We received 86 responses (estimated 25% response rate). Strikingly we found that respondents were predominantly older, white and with high educational qualifications. In general, participants gained a high level of benefits, especially in: learning more about their river, gaining new skills, boosting their pathways to nature connectedness, benefiting from being part of a community, and feeling empowered to care for their river. We report on the Photovoice case study, which was a Participatory action method in which participants in one catchment created and curated a set of captioned photos illustrating their experience in CaSTCo. Overall, this benefited the project because it: Publicises the insider perspective of tackling environmental threats; Encourages discussion, strengthens partnership and community; Helps foster reflection on personal connections to the issue; Drawing on the three sources of knowledge, we recommend that: Evaluation of participant benefits is built into the design of freshwater citizen science programmes to grow best practice. Greater emphasis is placed on benefits in communications to volunteers to boost recruitment and retention. More co-design with potential participants to intentionally build participant benefits into the design of the activities, to complement scientific data collection. Projects are designed to reach more diverse audiences, to enable a wider range of people to gain benefits from participation, and further research, using surveys and qualitative research methods e.g. interviews, should be conducted to ensure that all have the potential to gain benefits.

Item Type:	Monograph (Project Report)
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine > RA773 Personal health and hygiene including clothing, bathing, exercise, travel, nutrition, sleep, sex hygiene R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine > RA790 Mental health. Mental illness prevention.
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > Countryside and Community Research Institute
Depositing User:	Nick Lewis
Date Deposited:	03 Mar 2026 15:17
Last Modified:	03 Mar 2026 15:17
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/15887

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