In today’s complex world, policy decisions increasingly depend on the knowledge generated by a highly specialized science and technology elite whose expertise is beyond the comprehension of the general public. In democratic societies this can create problems of legitimacy between voters and their elected representatives if the former do not understand the reasoning behind the decisions made. To resolve this contradiction between democratic participation and specialized expert knowledge, citizen engagement with science is sought through public involvement in its production (Weingart et al., 2021). Accordingly, public participation in science, or citizen science, is growing rapidly and is being recognized by governments and science funding agencies as a promising potential solution to issues affecting the relationship between science and society. Firstly, it can advance science by accelerating research and data collection in processes requiring high volumes of observations. Secondly, by educating the public and shaping its perception of science it improves society’s scientific knowledge and, through greater involvement in the research process, promotes trust in and engagement with science. Finally, its democratizes science, since involving society in the process better reflects the population’s diversity and interests regarding the matters addressed (Strasser and Haklay, 2018).

To foster public engagement with science it is necessary to understand the psychosocial processes —the knowledge, attitudes, and motivations— that drive voluntary public participation in science. Identifying these processes would make it possible to promote the necessary public participation in the entire research process, thus fulfilling one of the fundamental purposes of open science as recommended by UNESCO (2021). No studies are available analyzing how citizens address this issue of citizen science in Spain. The closest precedent is the two-yearly report published by the FECYT (Fundacion Española de Ciencia y Tecnología) science and technology foundation tracking Spaniards’ science-related knowledge, attitudes, and conduct, but which does not specifically address the topic of citizen science. To advance understanding in this field and drive its development, it is therefore considered relevant to ask the public specifically about their knowledge of and attitudes to citizen science. The FECYT reports have thus provided a point of reference for this research, given that in the absence of specific studies on the factors that may influence Spaniards’ view of citizen science, the data obtained in the 2022 survey —such as the scant interest in science in general, the negligible appreciation of it, and the general unwillingness to participate in science projects— form the basis of some of the hypotheses put forward in this paper regarding citizen science.

Regarding public motivation to participate in science programs, most research has focused on analyzing the motivation of those who volunteer to contribute to research projects. This field of research on the experience of participants in research projects is relatively new and not very developed. It is usually based on studies, conducted in other disciplines within the social and health sciences, on the characteristics of volunteers. These studies therefore use methods pertaining to these social sciences, such as surveys or in-depth interviews, where respondents are asked to express their level of agreement with a list of statements about their motivation and to indicate which ones are most important for them (Land-Zandstra et al., 2021). West and Pateman (2016) proposed combining these questions with various motivation categories such as those defined by Finkelstien (2009), who distinguished between volunteers’ intrinsic motivations (e.g., for personal fulfillment) and extrinsic ones (e.g., seeking to achieve another objective through participation, for example, finding another job).

Looking beyond motivation, several studies show that an interest in science and a willingness to contribute to the production of knowledge are two important factors for participation (Everett and Geoghegan, 2016). Other aspects are also mentioned, such as personal fulfillment or motivation due to the specific characteristics of the project they are participating in, especially in the health and environment areas (Chia-Hsuan and TeEn, 2021; Lehman et al., 2020). Other studies examine sociodemographic variables and the interaction between them to determine the probability of participating in research projects or of repeating the experience (Pateman et al., 2021; Asingizwe et al., 2020).

While the studies reviewed refer mainly to volunteers who have participated in science initiatives, little is known about how the general public —not only members who have participated in specific projects— perceive and value citizen science, or about their possible motivations for contributing to it. The authors of this paper therefore consider that the data and the findings it sets out may also make an important contribution to understanding the development and implementation of citizen science in Spain.

As already mentioned, and given the prospect of members of the public becoming increasingly important contributors within the research ecosystem —as envisaged by both European and Spanish legislation— the general objective of this study is to analyze the Spanish public’s view of citizen science based on the information that survey respondents provide regarding their knowledge, attitudes, motivations, and personal experience in relation to science. The specific objectives (SOs) and the hypotheses associated with them are briefly detailed below.

This article seeks to analyze these objectives through the opinions collected from a large sample of Spaniards drawn from across Spain and from all social strata.

The contributions made by this study include a questionnaire developed specifically for this research and which has facilitated better understanding of public knowledge of and attitudes to citizen science, as well as of the possible motivations that would lead people, in this case a broad sample of the Spanish public, to participate in citizen science projects. The analyses of the questionnaire data show that, overall, the dimensions examined have a high internal consistency as regards measuring the contents of interest.

The data support the hypotheses posited. The descriptive analyses of the data show that the male and female respondents feel underinformed about citizen science (H1), even though their opinion of it is quite favorable (H2). Very few find negative aspects in its implementation and many express a positive view of the impact of citizen science over the next 10 years. Their answers on the motivations that would lead them to participate in citizen science projects primarily indicate intrinsic motivations, such as believing their contribution may help society, that the topic of research is of interest to them (an item that coincides with previous studies, e.g. Chia-Hsuan and Te-En, 2021), or that the project’s objectives target specific problems facing the community their belong. Their answers secondarily indicate extrinsic motivations (material or monetary incentives, public recognition, or also participation of people they know), with the two appearing significantly related. These results would support Hypothesis 4.

In line with Hypothesis 3, the data portray a public that participates little in scientific endeavor: only 15% of respondents said they had ever taken part in a science project, a figure that may even be overestimated since the FECYT survey reports that only 11.5% of respondents stated they had taken part in one. These data would indicate a disconnect between citizens and science, which could have a negative impact on its development. In Spain, the legislation set to govern the development of science in coming years assigns the general public an important role in scientific endeavor. On a wider scale, European regulations and UNESCO recommendations likewise require public participation. The reality, however, is that the public is absent from the process of producing science. With the exception of a minority, people do not appear to feel that the development of science concerns them. The low level of public participation in science identified in this study is not an anomaly; rather it is in line with the data collected in the long-running two-yearly FECYT survey, the 2022 edition of which —covering a sample of approximately 6,000 people— evidences the scant interest in science in general (only 12.3% of respondents spontaneously mention it as one of their areas of interest). Furthermore, when respondents are asked directly about science, they only express moderate interest in it (a score of around 3 on a 5-point scale), place little importance on it, and are generally unwilling to participate in science projects. The lack of engagement with science may be related —it is impossible to determine whether it is cause or effect— to the acute lack of information that respondents report receiving about citizen science.

The sociodemographic profile derived from analysis of the perception of citizen science by respondents indicates that the women who participated in the survey are significantly younger than the men (average female age of 40, slightly below the average age of the Spanish female population). In the tranche including this age the percentage of women with university qualifications is significantly higher than that of men, a finding that coincides with the data published in 2022 by the INE (Spain’s national statistics institute). In line with this, gender differences had the most significant effect sizes in this study. Twice as many women as men report having participated in citizen science projects. The data show that the archetypal Spanish participant in science is a female university graduate aged between 21 and 40 with a positive attitude to science that similarly translates into a greater willingness to make financial donations to science projects. She shares the same intrinsic motivations to participate as men, such as interest in the area under research and a desire to contribute to solving problems affecting the community and to help society at large, but also exhibits social motivations such as sharing the research experience with people she already knows and earning the social recognition associated with participation. The data suggest that while both men and women have intrinsic motivations for participating, women also find social or recreational incentives for doing so that do not appear to appeal to men. This aspect was not contemplated in Hypothesis 3 but nonetheless provides relevant information that should be taken into account as regards understanding the differing reasons that lead men and women to participate in science projects.

Women’s greater willingness to participate in altruistic causes coincides with what has been observed in the realms of work and volunteering, where women also participate more than men and take on tasks that do not generate personal benefit and may even hinder career advancement. To identify the psychosocial factors that may help explain the difference between men and women as regards participation in science, it would be beneficial to review the related research and experiences reported in the volunteering field. Similarly, it would be necessary to adopt the required measures to balance male and female participation in terms of roles and tasks performed in research processes.

In this sociodemographic profile, the influence of age is seen in a lesser willingness to participate altruistically in citizen science projects, a tendency that increases after the age of 30. Also, the older the respondent, the fewer acquaintances they have who participate in this type of project. Nonetheless, the most evident effect of age appears to be related to extrinsic motivation since, as mentioned, the data indicate a significative negative linear relationship between these two variables. The effect of age was likewise found in the opinion of the investment in science and technology and its dissemination, with those under 25 and those over 80 being most in agreement that it is sufficient. The decline in interest in participating in such projects matches the data in the FECYT survey, which also detects a significant decrease among those aged under 24 and those aged over 64. Notwithstanding, this study reveals that interest in science grows again in the oldest age groups. It appears that after several years of retirement, and once released from work-related tasks and with more free time available, retirees are attracted to participating in science projects that satisfy their desire to serve society and that offer an opportunity to establish social relations that have a positive impact on personal well-being beyond the associated contribution to science and which would constitute an incentive that strengthens participation among these age groups.

Level of education favorably affects the perception of citizen science across all variables and dimensions used to measure it; specifically, a difference was identified between respondents with university/postgraduate/doctorate-level qualifications and those who only completed primary and secondary education in all the variables analyzed. As regards occupation, respondents belonging to the group of high school and university students hold the most positive opinion of citizen science in all the variables analyzed and who are the most critical, together with the unemployed, of the investment in science and technology and its dissemination. The significant relationship between level of education and participation in science projects may be associated with a greater affinity to the culture of science. Finally, the sociodemographic profile outlined by the data is not substantially altered by the respondents’ autonomous community of residence, as this item only shows the isolated differences described in the Results section.

A possible reason explaining the discrepancies between the (little) knowledge and experience respondents' admitted having regarding citizen science and their reasonably good opinion of it and its impact can be found in the results: citizens' positive attitudes regarding science and technology could be the background or basis for their positive view of citizen science, a relationship comparable to what some authors have established between the interest in science and the willingness to participate in and contribute to the development of scientific knowledge (Everett and Geoghegan, 2016). The positive attitudes towards science and technology would translate into a readiness to participate in citizen science projects, although only 15% of respondents have actually done so. These same attitudes may likewise be why they are willing to make selfless financial donations to science projects. The positive attitudes that lead to a good opinion of science, and of science and technology in general, in turn explain the critical opinion of the public and private investment in science in Spain and the limited dissemination of scientific knowledge. The relationship between the variables associated with citizen science and science and technology in general is shown in the correlation analysis presented in Table V.

Citizens are currently contributing in many ways to science by mapping land, analyzing waters, identifying mosquitoes, locating birds and plants, scanning stars, or helping locate the mass graves of people missing as a result of armed conflict in Colombia (Tamayo, 2022), among many other examples (see Aliende, Castelló-Cogollos and Llopis, 2022). The complementary analysis conducted on the type of participation has helped to confirm they did so by providing information (contributory projects). The future development of citizen science, however, aims to promote projects with greater citizen involvement (co-created projects), designed jointly by researchers and citizens and in which the latter participate actively in most of the project’s activities and not merely as providers of information (see Bonney et al., 2009).

In summary, based on the general data collected in this study it could be said that the citizen science movement that has long been growing in Europe is still in its infancy in Spain as the hypothetical mainstay, namely the general public, still has very little theoretical or practical knowledge about it. In any case, public ignorance is a further indicator of the slow development of open science in Spain due to the lack of incentives and the barriers hindering its growth (Abadal, 2021; Abad-García et al, 2022; De Filippo, Lascurain and Sánchez, 2023; Sánchez and De Filippo, 2022).

Citizen science is one of the areas of open science and it is also striking to see how little prominence it has in one of the settings most conducive to scientific research, namely universities, where the development of open science has been found to be “in progress/pending”, with limited knowledge of it among faculty and limited availability of instruments and strategies to promote it, as confirmed by university administrators themselves (see Casani, 2022; Sánchez and De Filippo, 2022; De Filippo et al. 2023). It is to be expected that this situation will change in coming years, to the extent that the Spanish government, driven by European dynamics pushing towards open science, incorporates the concept of open science and citizen science in the terms and conditions of calls for research grant applications and in the recently passed law on science (2023). At the same time, universities are signing operational protocols such as the one proposed in 2023 by the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) seeking to change the assessment processes to attain a more open way of producing scientific knowledge that helps solve the social and economic problems of the society in which it takes place.

The main conclusion drawn from the data provided by the study is that in coming years all the institutions involved in Spain’s science ecosystem must engage in actions to encourage public involvement in science projects. For such involvement to occur it will be necessary to design proposals capable of changing and improving Spain’s culture of science. These proposals must also demonstrate the added value and social significance of involvement in science and of the various roles that members of the public are expected to perform within its development. The evidence to date indicates that the public has delegated the task of producing science to scientists.

Finally, it should be noted that this is a descriptive study that, on the one hand, identifies and highlights a reality but that, on the other, is limited by its scope and demonstrates the need to conduct future explanatory studies on the key variables identified through which to advance the understanding and development of citizen science. Furthermore, consideration must be given to other major public, private, and third-sector stakeholders and institutions within civil society that are conducting valuable participative grassroots science initiatives —sometimes from outside the official science and technology ecosystem— that are fundamental to encouraging bottom-up public participation in science. In future research it would be highly beneficial to examine in depth the role these other stakeholders play in encouraging citizen science.