Identifying Barriers to Citizen Scientist Retention When Measuring Pollination Services

Abstract

Pollination Investigators is a citizen science program designed to quantify the pollination service provided within home gardens. The goal of our initial study year was to develop and evaluate an experimental protocol using a survey to gather participant feedback. At three workshops held in the spring of 2014 we distributed sampling protocols along with eight (two of each species) sweet pepper, cucumber, tomato, and sunflower seedlings to 64 volunteers. Volunteers established the seedlings in their home garden and compared fruit weight and seed set among open pollinated flowers with flowers bagged to exclude insect visitors. At the end of the season only 14.1% of volunteers submitted any pollination services data. Using a follow-up survey, we identified the steps within our protocol that prevented volunteers from continuing with the project, and prescribe protocol revisions to improve volunteer retention when measuring garden pollination services.