Exploring Engagement Characteristics and Behaviours of Environmental Volunteers

Valentine Seymour,Mordechai (Muki) Haklay

doi:10.5334/cstp.66

Valentine Seymour, Mordechai (Muki) Haklay

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.66

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Abstract

Environmental volunteering and environmental citizen science projects both have a pivotal role in civic participation. However, one of the common challenges is recruiting and retaining an adequate level of participant engagement to ensure the sustainability of these projects. Thus, understanding patterns of participation is fundamental to both types of projects. This study uses and builds on existing quantitative approaches used to characterise the nature of volunteer engagement in online citizen science projects, to see whether similar participatory patterns exist in offline environmental volunteering projects. The study uses activity records of environmental volunteers from a UK environmental charity “The Conservation Volunteers,” and focuses on three characteristics linked to engagement: longevity, frequency, and distance travelled. Findings show differences in engagement patterns and contributor activity between the three UK regions of Greater London, Greater Manchester, and Yorkshire. Cluster analysis revealed three main types of volunteer engagement profiles which are similar in scale across all regions, namely participants can be grouped into “One-Session,” “Short-Term,” and “Long-Term” volunteer. Of these, the “One-Session” volunteer accounted for the largest group of volunteers.

Highlights

Environmental volunteering refers to the practice of unpaid volunteers spending time engaging in a wide range of practical conservation and outdoor-based activities, including pond weeding, dry stone walling, and coppicing trees (Bruyere and Rappe 2007)
We explore the engagement characteristics and contributing behaviours of volunteers who engage in environmental volunteering activities managed by the UK charity, The Conservation Volunteers (TCVs), using volunteer data extrapolated from their online database
TCV was selected as a case study project to identify whether participatory patterns in environmental citizen science projects exist in environmental volunteering projects

Summary

Introduction

Environmental volunteering refers to the practice of unpaid volunteers spending time engaging in a wide range of practical conservation and outdoor-based activities, including pond weeding, dry stone walling, and coppicing trees (Bruyere and Rappe 2007). Environmental volunteering shares some parallels with environmental citizen science projects, as both engage members of the public in activities that help contribute to the conservation and restoration of natural environments (Roy et al 2012). What distinguishes these two practices is the types of activities they engage in. Environmental volunteering and citizen science projects both play a pivotal role in civic participation and require a continuity of volunteers to sustain their practices (Reed and Selbee 2001; Mohan and Bulloch 2012; Chu et al 2012). Developing a volunteering or citizen science project that matches both the motivations and engagement levels of participants can be important for increasing and sustaining the level of long-term contribution (Chu et al 2012)

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