Research

INTRODUCTION

Citizen science projects continue to expand in size and focus to fill critical data and information needs for scientists, government and industry officials, and communities about a wide range of social and ecological systems (Baker 2016, Pocock et al. 2017, Tauginienė et al. 2020). Producing data that inform the conservation and preservation of ecological systems and the communities that rely on them is one of the many lauded benefits of citizen science (McKinley et al. 2017). However, professionals in many scientific disciplines often overlook citizen science data (Silvertown 2009, Bonney et al. 2014, Cooper et al. 2014). As Burgess et al. (2016) have pointed out, this is often due to scientists’ concerns about a lack of expertise among participants and the quality of citizen science data. As a result, participants who may have deep knowledge of, and attachment to, a place are not always invited to the table or represented among groups that utilize scientific information to inform local to regional public policy, resource management, or the direction of future research.

One way to increase the utility of citizen science data in conservation decision making is to leverage the “power of place” (Newman et al. 2017). Newman et al. (2017) define power of place as “actions motivated by the emotional, cultural, and material connection that many people have for the place in which they live,” including the “interconnected understandings” that emerge from those interactions (Newman et al. 2017:56). These authors found that when citizen science projects draw from the reservoir of place-based experiences of participants, participation increased, the data collected were more likely to be used in local decision making, and community resilience improved. Similarly, Hakkarainen et al. (2022:1153) use the term place-embedded agency to “highlight the implications of knowledge-place connections for the interactions and capacity of actors to act in a place.” In their study of community engagement in resource use planning at a World Natural Heritage site, the authors found that “claiming and expecting agency in local questions was channelised through place-belonging together with the epistemic dimension” of sense of place. Participants felt empowered to make their voice heard and enact change when they indicated both a strong sense of belonging in that place and a deep knowledge of its spatial and cultural-historical attributes (Hakkarainen et al. 2022:1153). These studies hint at important links between knowledge-place connections and active engagement in social-ecological decision making and governance. More broadly, people-place connections have been linked to a range of positive social, psychological, and ecological outcomes, including a stronger sense of belonging (Masso et al. 2017), connection to nature (Basu et al. 2020), community bonding (Mihaylov and Perkins 2014), and environmental stewardship and civic action (Payton et al. 2005, Trimbach et al. 2022), which seem especially evident at the local level (Chapin and Knapp 2015) and can lead to adaptive co-management of natural resources and ecosystem services (Krasny et al. 2014). Even still, the power of such connections with respect to citizen and community science is just beginning to come into focus.

By definition, hands-on, out-of-doors, environmental citizen science projects are place-based in that they are physically rooted in a distinct environment, history, culture, and economy. These places are both semiotic, having relational and symbolic meaning for those involved, and grounded in a specific material geography (Certomà 2016). Not only do place-based citizen science initiatives provide opportunities to learn about the ecology of that place in service of scientific and ecological literacy (Bonney et al. 2009), but more critically, they are grounded in a personally relevant, emotionally meaningful context. An individual’s involvement in understanding, monitoring, and observing conditions and changes in a place increases that individual’s capacity and agency to shape the material reality of that environment (Halliwell et al. 2021, Hakkarainen et al. 2022). As a result, participants may be more informed and more motivated to utilize science to address relevant social and ecological problems (Lokocz et al. 2011, Haywood et al. 2016, He et al. 2019, Jordan et al. 2019).

The research presented here is designed to explore the nature and impact of the people-place connections that motivate, and are the result of, citizen science. Our work underscores the dimensionality of place attachment among participants in a long-term citizen science program. We interrogate how varied elements of place influence attachment, and how program engagement might influence the strength of that attachment over time.

Sense of place as organizing framework

Our research is embedded within the overarching construct of sense of place, which includes both the level or degree of attachment an individual has for a setting, and the meaning(s) people invest in that place (Tuan 1977). Stedman (2016:896) has described place attachment as “fundamentally evaluative” in that it can be measured across various settings (present/absent, strong/weak, important/unimportant), whereas place meaning is “fundamentally descriptive” and “analytically distinct” because meaning-making involves the unique reasons for, relevance of, and significance of symbolic connections to a setting. Thus, a group of individuals can experience a similar intensity of place attachment to a place yet each can associate a personalized, and even unique, variety of meanings to that place.

As Williams and Miller (2020) have noted, research on place attachment has been largely quantitative in nature, owing partly to a major experiential “braid” of place attachment research that places a “strong empirical focus on characterizing the experience of particular places” (Williams and Miller 2020:18). Several quantitative tools have been developed to measure place attachment, including the often-utilized Place Attachment Scale (Kyle et al. 2005) and its derivations (Williams and Vaske 2003, Boley et al. 2021). These validated tools are useful in assessing whether place attachment exists from an evaluative perspective (e.g., I am/am not attached) and determining the intensity of that attachment on a predetermined scale (e.g., Strongly Disagree (1) to Strongly Agree (5), with a neutral option).

Place meanings (which often inform and are informed by the emotions, beliefs, and behaviors that undergird attachment) emerge from the ascribed symbolic associations people assign to places. Individuals create meaning by interpreting stimuli and experiences of a setting within their own filters, biases, and preferences, but also as a result of dominant social beliefs, norms, and systems (Stedman 2016). Place meanings are “not inherent in any space or place” but “must be created, reproduced, and defended” (Cresswell 1996:9). Place meanings are most often explored separately from and independently of place attachment, and almost always by using qualitative methods (Manzo 2005, Kyle and Chick 2007). Given the overlap and connections between the two concepts, as Wynveen et al. (2012:287) has pointed out, “rarely have researchers explored the association between place meaning and place attachment.” In their own study to investigate the association between these two elements, Wynveen et al. (2012:294) found that as a particular place meaning becomes more salient to an individual, a greater sense of attachment is evoked. Furthermore, “as the diversity and intensity of the meanings that visitors indicate are important increases, so does their intensity of attachment.” Thus, although the two concepts are theoretically and analytically distinct, place meanings can directly inform both the strength and breadth of place attachment.

To understand the mechanisms that inform place attachment, scholars differentiate between the sub-concepts of place identity, defined by Jorgensen and Stedman (2001:238) as “an individual’s cognitions, beliefs, perceptions or thoughts... invested in a particular spatial setting” and place dependence, or the perceived advantages a setting provides for goal and activity needs relative to other settings (Stokols and Schumacher 1981). Place identity involves cognitive perception and semiotic, place-based symbols linked to place meaning, whereas place dependence is more functional and relative, indicating a specific and direct need is being met by that place like no other. In the literature, dependence is usually linked with functional material needs only (e.g., the provision of food or water), although Jorgensen and Stedman’s (2001) definition of dependence includes goal needs as well, suggesting that these functional relationships can also be emotional (e.g., the provision of a desired emotional state). Although scholars debate how place identity and dependence are theoretically linked to place attachment (Scannell and Gifford 2010), there is agreement that both can be potential catalysts.

While recognizing distinctions between place attachment, with sub-concepts of identity and dependence, and place meaning, our research supports the call by Wynveen and colleagues (2012) to more carefully consider the intersections between meaning and attachment. As Stedman (2016:896) has noted, “It is a mistake to think that all people who are strongly attached to a place are attached to the same thing.” Although place attachment is often defined exclusively as an affective bond between a person and a place (Hernández et al. 2020), we favor a more expansive view, one defined by Altman and Low (1992:5) as “involv[ing] an interplay of affect and emotions, knowledge and beliefs, and behaviors and actions in reference to a place.” Because place attachment is a deeply personal and contextual phenomenon, investigating the many dimensions that comprise such connections may provide a bridge between the place meaning and place attachment points of entry in sense of place scholarship. At the same time, expanding the utility of a standard quantitative measure of place attachment to include multiple dimensions centered within individual experience of hands-on, out-of-doors, place-based science may allow citizen science program leaders to incorporate attachment and meaning-making directly into their recruitment and retention programming.

Exploring sense of place implications for citizen science

Since 2012, we have been exploring sense of place among participants in the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey (COASST) citizen science program to better understand the role of people-place connections in shaping both participant experiences and program outcomes. Our research has revealed a set of diverse but consistent place meanings that inform bonds between participants and the places they explore via citizen science (Haywood 2019) and has brought attention to the implications of those connections for conservation (Haywood et al. 2016). Some of this work has indicated that place attachment can be both a motivator to engage in citizen science and an outcome of that participation (Haywood 2015, Haywood et al. 2016, Haywood 2019, He et al. 2019, Haywood et al. 2021).

More recently, we have been working to understand which specific aspects of place citizen science participants feel attached to in order to more deeply interrogate how that attachment shapes participant experiences and project outcomes (Haywood et al. 2021). Because research on place attachment indicates that the forces shaping it are not uniform and differ as a result of culture, identity, life stage, and context (Stedman 2003, Woosnam et al. 2018), we have hypothesized that participants attach to multiple aspects of the place(s) where they engage in citizen science work (Haywood et al. 2021).

We utilized a theoretical model of place meaning first posited by Gustafson (2001) to better understand what specific dimensions of people-place relationships inform the attachment bonds that create place identities and/or dependence in a citizen science setting. This three-dimensional (“three-pole”) self-other-environment framework highlights three overlapping “spheres” of place-based experience that inform why an individual might find meaning in a particular setting:

• Self: some places are associated with highly personal meanings related to life path, emotional bond, and identity-based connection. These are most closely aligned with the concept of place identity.
• Environment: reflects the role of natural physical (nonliving) and biotic (living) elements in developing meaning associated with a place.
• Other: characteristics of the human inhabitants of a place (residents, visitors, links to family and friends) may also influence the meaning linked to a place.

Scholars have hypothesized that place attachment may result from the presence of place meanings within all three dimensions or may be a result of symbolic significance forged in only one or two areas. Raymond et al. (2010) utilized this three-dimension framework (hereafter the “three-pole model”) to test whether responses to statements from a variety of pre-existing place attachment measurement tools might fit into Gustafson’s (2001) three broad categories, with dimensions reframed slightly from “self” to “personal,” “other” to “community,” and “environment” to “natural environment.” Within the context of agrarian landowners, these authors found evidence of attachment within all three poles and argued that five unique constructs could explain attachment within them: place identity and place dependence along the personal pole, family bonding and friend bonding along the community pole, and nature bonding summarizing the natural environment pole.

Based on analysis of interview data (Haywood 2015, 2019), we proposed an adaptation (Haywood et al. 2021) of the Raymond et al. (2010) constructs within the three poles originally identified by Gustafson (2001) specifically to hands-on, out-of-doors, environmental citizen science where the relationship with the land is not through ownership or livelihood. This schema includes a component of deep time in community connection that we call social rootedness; distinguishes between nature (living) and environment (non-living); and adds a “science affinity” construct to explore the specific role of place-based scientific investigation in shaping people-place connections within citizen science activity (Fig. 1).

Beyond the cross-community comparison, our goal was to test the validity of our expanded constructs (Haywood et al. 2021) in service of developing a strong theoretical framework from which to conceptualize and measure the dimensionality of place attachment in hands-on, out-of-doors, environmental citizen science. Our approach embraces the call of Raymond et al. (2021) to engage with a pluralistic “senses of place” paradigm: exploring both a fixed and fluid conceptualization of people-place relationships. We embrace the tension that exists between the “spatially moored” and “ontologically secure” aspects of an individual’s sense of place (that is, the spatially fixed and continuous meaning and attachment associated with a place) and the ever-changing evolution of these relationships (Raymond et al. 2021:1). The methodology we utilize was designed to capture both the “stable and authentic meanings, emotions and identities that are attached to a place” at any given point in time (Raymond et al. 2021:3) and consider how they may change over time. We are particularly interested in the ways that knowledge-place connections inform a changing sense of place.

METHODS

This work uses the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST) as the research population. COASST is a 22-year-old environmental citizen science program inviting coastal residents in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska (United States) to collect specific data on beachcast birds (carcasses), or marine debris, on a monthly basis for as long as they wish to participate (Parrish et al. 2017). COASST participants, or COASSTers, are trained in a single, intensive in-person session (five to seven hours) conducted by a program expert with scientific credentials. Post training, attendees are invited to sign up for COASST by selecting a beach of their choice to monitor. This paper is restricted to participants in the beached bird program, approximately 4400 of whom have been trained since program inception, and 980 of whom were actively gathering data at the time of the study (2020).

Data reported in this article were obtained from an online survey we developed and disseminated to COASST participants (IRB Protocol STUDY00011332). The survey used the constructs built from Raymond et al. (2010) following Gustafson’s (2001) three-dimensional model as a foundation, alongside those first detected in COASST interviews (Haywood et al. 2021). We specifically set out to reveal quantitative differences, measured within a single, standardized scale, in multiple dimensions of place attachment in an out-of-doors, hands-on, environmental citizen science context and where the participants do not own the land they survey.

We started with a unique set of 24 statements published in Raymond et al. (2010) because these represented a subset of their larger exploration of place attachment that resonated positively with their focal audience(s) (Fig. 2). This set of statements was initially reduced to 17 by deleting statements that had no relevance in a non-ownership situation, e.g. “I live in [place name] because my family is here.” We modified remaining statements to specifically apply to the beach monitoring sites utilized by COASSTers. For instance, “When I spend time in the natural environment in [place], I feel at peace with myself” became “When I spend time on [my beach name], I feel at peace with myself.” Finally, we deleted all superlatives within the statements (e.g., more, very, strongly, a lot) so that the only measures of value direction (positive or negative) and intensity (i.e., the addition of “strongly”) came from the Likert scale respondents used to assess the statements. To our set of 17 adapted statements we added 36 supplemental statements to ensure we could more fully assess place attachment within a citizen science context among the additional constructs of the three-pole model specifically hypothesized to exist by Haywood et al. (2021): environment (i.e., nonliving physical elements) bonding, science affinity, and social rootedness. Additional statements within certain attachment constructs (e.g., friends and family bonding, nature bonding) were also added both to balance the statement count given the original deletions and to address specific potential points of attachment in the context of citizen science (see full statement set in Appendix 1). We intentionally incorporated a diverse set of statements in our survey that included affective, cognitive, and conative forms of attachment (Scannell and Gifford 2010). Our final set included 53 statements (Fig. 2) representing seven constructs arrayed across three poles (Fig. 1).

This entire statement set was reviewed for construct validity, given the adapted three-pole model (Haywood et al. 2021); and finally reviewed for face validity, given a citizen science respondent population. The review included three independent scholars with expertise in place attachment, informal STEM learning, and public participation in scientific research; the COASST project staff; and a volunteer focus group of 21 COASST marine debris participants. Each group had the opportunity to review and provide written comments on the statements and Likert scoring system, and to provide additional feedback during online synchronous meetings. Wording in the final survey reflects these edits, including the use of the Likert wording (Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Ambivalent, Agree, Strongly Agree) as well as a “Not Applicable” option.

In October 2020, we invited 414 COASST participants in the beached bird monitoring program to complete the online survey. Participants were selected if they were considered currently active in the program (defined as having completed at least one data collection event within a calendar year of the date of the survey) and had participated in COASST for at least one year (defined as a first data collection event date more than one year before the survey date).

To reduce survey fatigue, each participant only received a subset of statements on the basis of random selection algorithms built into the online survey management platform (Qualtrics). Statements were randomly selected from a set of seven predetermined constructs (e.g., Fig. 1) to ensure that all respondents received a minimum of 3 to 4 statements within each group, with minimal redundancy across constructs.

A total of 263 COASST participants completed the survey fully, a response rate of 64%. Information on the program demographics of respondents included an independent measure of engagement with the program: the number of years in the program assessed as most recent data collection date at the time of the online survey minus first data collection date. Fifteen percent of respondents were classified as new (up to one year of participation), 36% had participated for 2–5 years, 28% for 6–10 years, and the remaining 21% for 11 or more years. Other demographics (e.g., age, gender, education, race/ethnicity) were either not collected by COASST or were only partially available for the responding population, and so were not investigated.

Following receipt of responses, we reduced our statement set to 51 (Fig. 2, Appendix 1), because two statements were deleted a posteriori as not relating directly to place attachment but instead to program attachment, or because the statement wording was confusing to the respondents based on survey feedback.

General and specific attachment constructs

We intentionally added statements to our survey covering aspects of place attachment specific to programmatic tasks and themes as well as to aspects of the survey sites themselves. Thus, our full survey statement set went beyond the five constructs explored in the Raymond study, while still adhering to the basic three-pole structure. Because our intent in this work was to understand and quantify the role particular aspects of a setting have in creating or strengthening attachment centered within the work of citizen science, rather than only evaluate its presence or degree as a composite score, we excised all statements of general place identity (e.g., “Tidewater beach means a lot to me”), and separately of general place dependence (e.g., “No other place can compare to Tidewater beach”), a posteriori from our construct analysis. This was in response to our realization that many statements included in quantitative analyses of place attachment speak broadly to place identity, or place dependence, without touching on the specific aspects of a place underlying attachment.

Accordingly, we placed non-specific statements in two general super-constructs: Broad Place Identity (BPI) or Broad Place Dependence (BPD; see below for Likert scores). We retained all statements that directly referenced:

• an aspect of self-identity (as opposed to general self-referent statements like “means a lot to me” that were retained in BPI);
• a friend, family, or community “other”; or
• a component of the natural environment or scientific process.

From a theoretical perspective, the statements that remained (N = 41) also measure place identity and dependence, but in a more specific form. Using existing literature on potential aspects of a setting that inform place attachment (Trentelman 2009, Lewicka 2011, Ramkissoon et al. 2012, Ujang 2012), as well as COASST participant interview and focus group data (He et al. 2019, Haywood et al. 2021), we expanded the three-pole, five construct structure presented in Raymond et al. (2010) to six equilateral constructs (Fig. 3) where the arrangement of new constructs was intentionally in-between the personal, natural environment, and community poles (see definitions in Fig. 4).

Statistical analyses

Because each respondent saw a unique subset of all statements (as described above), techniques that are typically used to explore multivariate survey response data, such as principal components analysis, could not be applied to our dataset. Essentially, our dataset contained too many missing data cells. Therefore, we adapted a set of alternative multivariate techniques to both assess construct validity and provide a robust assessment of the degree to which participants rated statements in correlated ways (see Appendix 2 for detailed analysis methods and results).

To address issues of construct validity, we engaged in an iterative assessment of Cronbach’s alpha using the alpha function available in the psych package (Revelle 2021) in R version 4.1.2 (R Core Team 2021). This particular function calculates Cronbach’s alpha using pairwise correlations instead of global correlations, and therefore can be applied to data with missing values. To further explore the degree to which COASST participants responded to a given pair of statements similarly/differently, we employed cluster analyses. These analyses were interchanged iteratively to create a cluster analysis statement set that maximized Cronbach’s alpha.

Cluster analyses proceeded by first calculating a distance matrix containing measures of similarity of response between pairs of statements based on Likert scores from all participants that had responded to both statements within a given pair. We then applied hierarchical clustering approaches (hclust in R version 4.1.2; R Core Team 2021) to the resultant distance matrix to identify which statements were more similar to each other, and the overall structure of statement similarity, which we visualized via dendrograms. To identify an optimal number of statement sets, we calculated the mean silhouette width for different numbers of clusters using the silhouette function in the cluster package (Maechler et al. 2021) in R. Silhouette width (Rousseeuw 1987) indicates the degree to which any one observation, here statement, belongs to a given cluster based on the distances to other observations within the cluster relative to distances to the next nearest cluster, and where widths approaching one indicate close clustering (Menardi 2011). We identified the optimal number of clusters, k, as the one that maximized mean silhouette width (for a full description of clustering methods, see Appendix 2).

We used the cluster results for two purposes: identification of outliers, or those statements unaligned with any other statements; and identification of clear groups of statements, or those statements strongly clustered together. Although the clustering approach does not indicate that the respondents understood strongly clustered statements to be instantiations of the same thing, it does indicate that the respondents, as a population, treated the statements in the same way. This approach allowed us to iteratively refine our constructs, with subsequent recalculation of Cronbach’s alpha.

Place attachment shape

Finally, to build multidimensional place attachment shapes (following Haywood et al. 2021), we created global averages across all statements within each construct, where statements are equally weighted. Shapes are presented as hexagons, where the vertices describe these values. Negative responses (i.e., Likert score < 3) are represented inside an “ambivalence threshold” to visually signal disagreement in population response. In order to identify whether average construct scores differed among constructs (e.g., natural environment bonding versus self-identity), as well as among individuals according to their duration of participation within COASST, we calculated 95% confidence intervals of mean construct scores using bootstrap resampling with 1000 permutations (see Appendix 2 for detailed methods).

RESULTS

Results from our revised general super-constructs revealed differences between general place identity and general place dependence. The COASST population espoused rather strong identification (BPI) with their beach (mean = 4.25, standard deviation = 0.076, N = 5 statements), and rather more weak and variable dependence (BPD) on that same beach, at least regarding functional goods and services (mean = 3.17, standard deviation = 0.723, N = 5). In fact, when two statements focused on health benefits, including emotional well-being and physical well-being, are removed from the BPD construct, responses turn negative (mean = 2.60, standard deviation = 0.07, N = 3), suggesting that COASST participants attach little to no importance to their specific beach as a unique, best or “only” place to conduct their valued activities.

The intensity and shape of attachment

Whereas other studies have pruned out statements with atypical response frequencies (i.e., low loadings on multivariate axes, non-majority loading on multiple axes), and/or with response means that indicate the respondent population did not incorporate the statement as indicative of self, we argue here for the need to retain all statements to more clearly understand how our population is, and is not, attached to place. In support of that goal, we created an attachment “shape” diagram (Fig. 5), where the global Likert average across a construct is mapped relative to all other constructs. The graphic model presented positions each dimension on a multidimensional plain where the axes of each construct are equilibrated, allowing the interrogator to graphically compare and contrast the relative intensity of attachment among each construct informed by distinct categories of connection (Fig. 5). Absolutely larger shapes outside of the ambivalence threshold imply more intense attachment. Uniform shapes imply equality of attachment across constructs, whereas asymmetrical shapes indicate variation in the way(s) the responding population understand and value their monitoring site.

In general, population responses to the groups of statements comprising each construct were tight, producing statistically differentiable mean scores even though the total Likert spread across means was only just above two Likert points (Fig. 5; Table S1 Appendix 2).

Self-identity

Self-identity (SI) statements differ from BPI statements because they include a clear reference to an individual’s concept of self, which differs from the broader category of place identity that encompasses all the ways an individual feels personally “invested in a particular spatial setting” (Jorgensen and Stedman 2001:238). Attachment through place self-identity trended toward agreement (construct average 3.7, range 3.3 to 4 over six statements), suggesting that place attachment can and does exist in the absence of significant place dependence. The strongest statements here reflected self-learning (mean = 4.0) and belonging (mean = 3.9), whereas the weakest response was relative to beach selection because of personal importance (mean = 3.3). Given other statements of beach “importance” were ranked higher (e.g., “Tidewater beach is an important part of who I am”) it is possible that the low-ranking statement reflected the practicalities of beach selection in the program rather than attachment per se.

Family and friend bonding

Responses to statements about family and friend bonding (FF) averaged slightly above ambivalent (3.30), which is weak relative to other constructs. In fact, aside from social rootedness (see below), 3–15% of respondents to FF statements marked “N/A” as a response, indicating that they considered the statements not relevant to their situation rather than not true.

Of the six statements that comprise the FF construct, the three focused on family averaged only slightly above those focused on friends (3.34 versus 3.25). Rather, statement phrasing appeared to be much more important, as respondents tended to rank identically worded statements similarly. Thus, “I like to go to Tidewater beach with friends (family)” was essentially equally and positively scored regardless of whether friends (mean = 3.84) or family (mean = 3.76) attended the outing, whereas “I do COASST activities at Tidewater beach because I can spend time with friends (family) there” was equally and minimally resonant (mean = 2.81 versus 2.80, respectively). In sum, COASST responses give us little reason to believe the effect of bonding with family versus bonding with friends differs enough to treat these as separate constructs.

Science community bonding

Rather than articulate a connection through a geographic community, science community bonding (SCB) involves connection to those most closely related to the shared scientific experience of project work in a place, as is clearly articulated in the highest-rated statement in this construct: “Doing surveys at Tidewater beach makes me feel connected to other COASSTers, even if I don’t know them personally.” Although this construct contained the fewest statements (3), responses were higher in aggregate (mean = 3.78) than either of the other two constructs attached to the community pole (FF: 3.30; SR: 2.08). This demonstrates a direct link between engagement and the formation of place attachment bonds for this population of citizen science participants.

Social rootedness

Although COASST participants do demonstrate some connection between place and self (SI), these identity-based statements differ from more specific statements that reference a historical sense of heritage or ancestry. The social rootedness (SR) construct did not appear to play a significant role in attachment to survey location for the majority of COASST participants in this project, with responses at the statement level trending toward disagreement (mean = 2.06; range 1.70 to 2.24, N = 5 statements). These statements also had the highest proportion of “N/A” as a response (19–32%), suggesting that a non-trivial number of respondents found them irrelevant.

Nature/environment bonding

Elements of the natural environment (NEB) were strongly central to the place attachment of COASST participants, and clustered as a whole. NEB was the highest-rated construct in our set (mean = 4.33), just over half a Likert score above the most proximate construct (SCB). Of the 12 statements comprising this construct, seven relate to nature and biotic entities (e.g., coastal plants and animals), whereas five relate to the abiotic or the sensory environment (e.g., sound of the waves and water). Whereas the biotic environment, and especially nature as a whole and birds specifically, scored marginally higher than aspects of the abiotic environment (mean across statements = 4.38 versus mean = 4.26, respectively), individual statement averages were interleaved throughout the range (3.94 to 4.54), suggesting that both biotic and abiotic aspects of the beach environment result in attachment (see Fig. S4 in Appendix 2 for more detail).

Using T-tests carried out on the observed agreement rates between pairs of statements, we further examined whether the agreement rates between nature bonding statement pairs (i.e., nature bonding statement 1 vs nature bonding statement 2) was significantly different from the agreement rates between nature and environment bonding statement pairs (nature bonding statement 1 vs environmental bonding statement 1). Agreement rates between nature bonding statement pairs were not significantly different (a = 0.05) from that observed between nature-environment bonding pairs (t = 1.20, df = 40, p = 0.24). An identical finding when comparing environment-environment bonding pairings relative to environment-nature bonding pairings (t = 0.24, df = 19, p = 0.81). Thus, we conclude it is the whole of the environment to which COASSTers are responding, not specific biotic or abiotic parts.

Science affinity

Over all science affinity (SA) statements, respondents trended toward agreement (mean = 3.52; range 2.69 to 4.26). However, when the four SA dependence statements (e.g., “the best,” “more satisfaction than anywhere else”) are removed from this construct, leaving only elements of doing science and learning, the reduced construct average increases half a Likert point (mean = 4.04). This suggests that although it is certainly an intersection of the place and the work that helps to create attachment, there is nothing specific or unique about the site that sets it apart from other beach locations, except for the practicality of the program: COASSTers visit the same beach monthly, for years.

Time in program

Because the degree of engagement of individuals in citizen science is an important concept (Dickinson et al. 2012, Parrish et al. 2018) and may well influence data quality, especially in hands-on, repeated activity programs, we chose to sort COASST respondents into categories as a function of their time in the program at the time of the survey, measured as years since first survey (Fig. 6).

Attachment in each construct increased in intensity as a function of time in program, albeit marginally (half a Likert point from 1 year to 10+ years, at best; Fig. 6). Only SI increased significantly as a function of engagement (Figure S8 in Appendix 2). Not surprisingly, NEB, SCB, and SA constructs were very strong sources of attachment regardless of time in program. In fact, because these statement scores were so high across the entire COASST population, there was little effective room for change, or a ceiling effect.

DISCUSSION

This research underscores the dimensionality of place attachment among participants in a long-term citizen science program to better understand how varied elements of place influence attachment. We believe the results highlighted above advance a theoretical framework from which to conceptualize and better measure the dimensionality of place attachment in hands-on, out-of-doors, environmental citizen science.

Of the six specific dimensions of place attachment explored in this study, the shape of attachment for COASST participants is asymmetrical and dominated by nature-environment bonding, with secondary strengths in science community bonding, self-identity, and science affinity. Survey respondents displayed relatively low attachment strength along the friends and family axis, and no resonance within the dimension of social rootedness. Furthermore, individuals persisting in the COASST program for over 10 years indicate stronger degrees of attachment in almost all dimensions.

This research approach allows a clearer picture of the salient facilitators of attachment for specific groups of individuals, as has been called for by Wynveen et al. (2012). Although we believe our visual representation of place attachment shape adds a layer of dimensionality to standard quantitative measures of attachment, even these images belie more subtle differences among responses to the range of statements in each construct area. As such, there are still opportunities to elevate more granular aspects of place attachment.

Bifurcated place identity and dependence levels

Whereas the citizen science participants in this study indicated a strong general identification with place (BPI), they also displayed only weak dependence, including BPD scores as well as responses to other dependence statements interleaved into our constructs (see Appendix 1 for all statements). It is possible that lower rates of place dependence stem from the fact that COASST respondents do not own the land where they survey. For citizen scientists working on public lands, weaker dependence, and especially functional dependencies, may not be unusual. Similarly, however, statements within the Raymond et al. (2010) personal pole category disaggregated to align with our BPI and BPD groupings reveal that agrarian landholders also demonstrated a bimodal distribution of responses to general attachment and dependence: strongly affirming attachment and eschewing statements of dependence.

To understand this bifurcation, it might be helpful to consider the nuances that exist when measuring place attachment quantitatively. Participants who have any type of affinity to a place may be most likely to respond positively to broad place identity statements (e.g., “Tidewater beach means a lot to me”). By contrast, only individuals with a very strong functional dependence on a place may be likely to respond positively to broad place dependence statements (e.g., “I would not substitute any other area for the activities I do in Tidewater beach”), in part because the wording of such statements forces a comparison between that place and all other places, which BPI statements do not. In other words, participants with any type of affinity for a place may be more likely to respond positively to BPI statements, whereas only those with robust functional or emotional dependence would likely respond positively to statements of BPD. This difference may contribute to the type of clearly divergent results regarding BPI and BPD seen in COASST respondents and echoed in the Raymond et al. (2010) study.

The multidimensionality of attachment in citizen science

Considering the three original attachment poles (personal, natural environment, and community) explored in this study, connections to the natural environment and self-identity play the most significant roles for COASST participants in forming attachment to a survey beach. Research has demonstrated that human-nature bonds are variably present as sources of personal identity and beliefs (Olivos et al. 2011), that a number of factors may predict and strengthen those bonds (Oh et al. 2021), and that the bond strength can determine environmental awareness (Chawla 2013). At the core, the strong natural dimension of attachment demonstrated by COASSTers may relate to biophilia, or the “natural affinity for life” (Wilson 1984), connecting humans into the natural environment via social, mental, and physical health benefits (Keniger et al. 2013, Seymour 2016, Dopko et al. 2019).

Strong science affinity and science community bonding

One especially important aspect of natural environment attachment for COASST participants involves an affinity toward scientific exploration of and engagement with place. Butz and Eyles (1997:10) have called this an “ecological sense of place,” referring to those elements of people-place connection built on the “knowledge of place ecological characteristics that yield meaning.” Others have demonstrated that epistemic affect, or emotional learning, can positively influence science education and reinforce related experiential activities (Davidson et al. 2020). Positive science affinity (SA) scores among COASST participants may result from both an increased ecological sense of place and an epistemic affect toward science processes themselves. Indeed, COASST participants who have been with the program for several years display a stronger sense of scientific self connected to the data collection and communication of program results, relative to first-year participants. That is, they are emotionally motivated by the praxis and discovery of science, as well as by the discussion of it (He et al. 2019). In this context, high levels of SA attachment are not all that surprising, given that COASST is a hands-on citizen science program where participants are experiencing science in the moment (on the beach during a survey) and through the larger data stories of which their individual data points may play a part.

Of relevance, the strongest scores in the community dimension of attachment for COASST participants involved SCB, and specifically where that community is called out as people imagined but not individually known (i.e., other COASSTers program-wide). He et al. (2019) also found strengthening of science identity within COASST participants who had engaged for more than a year relative to those just trained, including the concepts of “science team member” and “member of the COASST collective.” This aspect of social strengthening of place attachment is different from friends or family, both of which were relatively weak in this study, in that it is not sociality per se that is important but the strength of the community of practice that helps to anchor the individual participant in their place of citizen science work.

Weak social rootedness

We speculate that the low SR construct average among COASSTers is a function of the demographic characteristics of the respondent population. We specifically augmented our attachment framework with a social rootedness construct to acknowledge individuals from Indigenous communities participating in COASST. Responses from COASST participants during our earlier research indicated that social rootedness is a very specific and unique form of self-identity. Although this construct was not strong in the sense of the majority of COASST participants, it was particularly resonant with some individuals. For instance, during the pilot testing phase of our survey (wherein respondents were encouraged to provide written feedback), one participant who ranked SR statements highly shared how important these issues were, as someone with Indigenous heritage:

This was my favorite section of the survey,...finally someone is asking these questions! It is about so much more than observations on a beach for those of us linked to the land through our ancestors.

Recognizing the role that ancestry and heritage play in motivation for citizen science engagement and bonds between people and place in these programs is an important factor for program planning and design and may motivate engagement in citizen science for some communities. One common intrinsic motivator for ecological stewardship behavior, for example, is a desire for relatedness, or an “affiliation with a community or group, such as farmers, fishers, hunters, or Indigenous groups” (Bennett et al. 2018:602). In particular, the concept of biocultural stewardship, not restricted to Indigenous communities, is increasingly recognized as an important aspect of place-based identity and behavior linked to local ecological knowledge systems (Turner et al. 2000, Berkes 2012, McMillen et al. 2020). Accordingly, scholars continue to highlight the need to consider Indigenous ways of knowing in addition to and independent from the Western scientific enterprise (Harris et al. 2021, Smith 2021), and in citizen science more specifically (Tengö et al. 2021).

Importantly, the social rootedness “minority report” among COASSTers suggests that attempting to paint a picture of how a set of participants, or survey respondents, understand and connect to place as a singular, or majority tendency, may hide important differences that may highlight and elevate diversity within a program.

Time in program effects

Attachment appeared to increase slightly as a function of time in program, even along those constructs demonstrating higher scores for new participants (e.g., NEB) and thus with little room to increase on a 1–5 scale. This growth was more pronounced in the SI, SR, and SA constructs over the long term (10+ years) and within the SCB construct within the five- to eight-year period. However, we caution that this study cannot prove causation. That is, one interpretation is that attachment deepened through time in the individuals who persisted in the program. A second interpretation is that those who stayed longer in the program possessed higher levels of attachment a priori.

Whether attachment strength, or shape, was also associated with other correlates, such as gender or education level, is unknown, but may be likely given known demographic differences within outdoor, environmental citizen science (e.g., Moore et al. 2008, Cooper and Smith 2010). How these factors may affect choices people make to participate in environmental citizen science and their propensity toward attachment and meaning-making relevant to their survey locations is a fruitful area of exploration.

The strongest increase in Likert scores as a function of time in program occurred in the SI construct, with almost all statement averages increasing half a Likert point or more from novice to 10+ year participants. This may reflect the fact that although some new participants select a beach that already has significance to them, a beach they know well, others select a location that may be convenient but is unknown to them, such that connection between self and beach grows over time independent of other catalysts. Residence length is a known predictor of place attachment (Anton and Lawrence 2014). Growth in the SCB construct in years five to eight suggests that continuing program engagement beyond the first few years may be critical in facilitating a broader attachment to communal forms of science and place connection, centering the individual within a “science team” that is simultaneously attached to many individuals yet collectively similar (i.e., the beach environment) spaces.

Longitudinal analysis of place attachment at the individual level was not possible in this study. Even still, the differences in attachment intensity among groups of participants sorted by time in program seen here provides, at least, an initial indicator of the effect that repeated interactions in citizen science in a given setting has on intensity of attachment. We hypothesize that the potential of citizen science program engagement to strengthen and expand attachment to place may be linked to strong levels of conservation literacy previously demonstrated among citizen scientists engaged in programs like COASST (Haywood et al. 2016), a theoretical prerequisite for moving from understanding to action. Given what is known about the role of place attachment in facilitating pro-environmental behavior (Halpenny 2010) and as a component of ecosystem restoration (Hawthorne et al. 2022), the adoption of “green” technology and behavior (Razem 2020), and the perception of and response to climate change threats (Tenbrink and Willcock 2023), this potential relationship has promise.

Broader implications

As a whole, this research underscores links between lived and learned knowledge of a setting and attachment to that place, provides empirical evidence for the dynamism and complexity of place attachment, and raises the importance of sense of place as integral to the citizen science experience.

Theoretical: knowledge-community-attachment connections

Hakkarainen et al. (2022:1149) posit that “people can relate to local knowledge as embedded actors through place-belonging.” Katsamagka (2013) found that repeated interactions with place fostered by citizen science may strengthen attachment bonds over time, especially if they strengthen knowledge and understanding. In our study, average survey scores associated with statements that reference “doing citizen science” (4.2), “doing science” (4.3), and learning about the coastal ecology of a place (4.1) are as high as those that represent other dimensions of attachment in the natural environment pole, including “watching birds” (4.5) and “beach combing” (4.4) (see Appendix 1). The act of “doing” (of developing knowledge of a place) plays a fundamental role in shaping attachment for these members of the science team. Such “place embedded agency” based on knowledge about a place has promise to be particularly powerful when organized and integrated through collaborative citizen science program structures (Hakkarainen et al. 2022).

Further still, our results indicate that links between knowledge of a place and the scientific network of individuals involved in the development of that knowledge can deepen place attachment. Connections to a sense of community have been documented as an important aspect of place attachment (Mihaylov and Perkins 2014, Gurney et al. 2017). Our study expands this work, suggesting that citizen science operates beyond the geographic, familial, and/or ethnic/heritage definitions of community. Here, there is an additional path toward the scientific community through a strongly shared COASST community of practice where all individuals are repeating the same tasks at their chosen place in service of a collective whole (Haywood et al. 2016, He et al. 2019). Thus citizen science programs may provide a unique opportunity for individuals to develop place-based community deeply tied to a shared scientific exploration of place.

Methodological: quantitative metric of multi-dimensional attachment

Broad place identity or dependence metrics are usefully employed in general attachment scales (e.g., Kyle et al. 2005) but may have limited value when the goal is a deeper understanding of why symbolic and functional bonds exist. General statements like those in our BPI and BPD constructs are frequently found in place attachment measurement scales (Williams and Vaske 2003, Kyle et al. 2005, Boley et al. 2021). When combined into a composite average, statements of this nature can provide a valuable snapshot of attachment intensity. However, we aver that this approach to measuring attachment is much less useful when the goal is a deeper understanding of the character and dynamism of attachment. Understanding the context in which attachment forms and how that might inform the intentional cultivation, maintenance, and growth of people-place bonds in educational or scientific initiatives like hands-on, out-of-doors citizen science necessitates a more granular methodological process that holistically considers the interactions between place meaning and attachment (Farnum et al. 2005, Wynveen et al. 2012).

The multidimensional place attachment framework developed in this research was designed to add strategic depth to existing quantitative measures of place attachment to better understand nuances of meaning that define the personal, community, and natural environmental poles, and also highlight the interstices (Fig. 5). Our earlier research has suggested that many COASST participants are attached to the places that they survey, but that such attachment was in no way uniform (Haywood 2019, Haywood et al. 2021). The concept of place attachment as a multidimensional shape offers one model in which to investigate the root catalysts of place attachment in any setting, specifically because it becomes easy to visualize dimensions along which attachment is strong, versus those in which attachment is weaker to nonexistent (e.g., nature-environment bonding versus social rootedness across the COASST population, Fig. 5). We believe that a deeper understanding of the dimensions of attachment may provide the scaffolding on which place meanings can be mapped more systematically so that the intersections and links between the two concepts may be explored more fully (Wynveen et al. 2012). In essence, the dimensional method used here to explore place attachment adds an element of the descriptive into an otherwise evaluative tool. The concept of place attachment shape offers one model in which to investigate the root catalysts of place attachment in any setting. In turn, we hope this illuminates opportunities for more direct and informed avenues for program managers to leverage the “power of place” to increase participation, the use of citizen science data in decision making, and community resilience (Newman et al. 2017).

Finally, we caution against the default to central tendency measures because these tend to homogenize a population, masking a diversity of attachment shapes as a function of engagement, ethnicity, education, or other forms of lived experience. We therefore support maintaining statement sets validating particular worldviews present within the project landscape, even if they may not resonate with the majority of participants. We suggest that this approach can create a reflective space within which questions about participant demographics and lived experience can be explored and discussed.

Practical: the role of place attachment in citizen science

We believe that citizen science programs that treat the places where research occurs not simply as the backdrop from which important data are collected but as a central actor, educator, and motivator in the research process can strengthen the connections between participants and the program itself, enhance the quality of the data and observations collected, and enhance the learning and outcomes that emerge from program participants.

Scholarship on motivation to participate in citizen science tends to focus on the central scientific theme(s) of the program, the social and intellectual interests of the participants, and the elements of the experience that enhance or reinforce specific identities like “scientist” or “environmentalist” (Phillips et al. 2018, He et al. 2019). Given the strong link between nature bonding, environmental literacy, and stewardship and conservation action within citizen and community science (Scholz 2011, Cooper et al. 2015, Newman et al. 2017), situating these connecting themes within the spaces of citizen science praxis (the places in which people choose to practice environmental science) has the potential to feedback positively into both recruitment and retention.

A deeper analysis of the many forms of meaning participants in hands-on, out-of-doors, environmental citizen science attach to their place(s) of project/program work is needed in order to fully incorporate the richness and importance of people-place connections into this quintessential place-based enterprise. Exploring the shapes of place attachment in public engagement in science across the range of projects, settings, and audiences defining a broad continuum, from continental-scale citizen science involving many thousands of people unknown to each other personally to the deeply rooted-in-place projects that arise within community-owned science (Cooper et al. 2021), has the potential to create commonalities while preserving differences, illuminating a braided path of people-place connections.

Findings from our work on place attachment in COASST suggest that programs can optimize people-place relationships and the learning they can foster by providing:

• opportunities for repeated, frequent observations of a place or environmental phenomena (Haywood 2015);
• tasks that require participants to ask questions about and make sense of the observations/data collected from a place within their own situated experience (instead of just collecting and submitting) (Haywood 2019); and
• structures to support peer interaction and engagement so that participants share their situated knowledge of place with others and can compare and contrast local experiences to make broader inferences (Haywood et al. 2016).

Finally, we believe our expanded model of attachment allows those invested in understanding the role of place attachment in experiences like citizen science to explore more carefully how such attachment might relate to any number of other important social-ecological project goals. Although not explicitly present in our study, for example, we suggest that attachment that emerges in the spaces between NEB, SCB, and FF might yield important opportunities to support environmental justice efforts through citizen science programs.

CONCLUSION

Having worked in citizen science programs for many years, we have seen time and time again the deep care that program participants maintain for the places they study as a part of program participation. We have also seen participants gain knowledge about science, scientific processes, and the natural components they study. This research provides empirical evidence of the attachment of citizen scientists to the places where they study and that the more pathways through which one can connect to place, the stronger that attachment can grow. Critically, an important part of that attachment involves an affinity for science, which adds a richness to people-place bonds that is often overlooked in other studies on attachment. Further still, this work provides clear evidence that place attachment is not a universal or unidimensional experience but indeed is multidimensional and that individuals maintain varied place attachment profiles (shapes) even while broader patterns may exist.

A further examination of the shape of attachment among citizen science participants pre- and post-engagement in multiple citizen science programs is necessary to understand whether and how these shapes differ and if differences can be linked to specific aspects of each program (e.g., focal issue, program design, time involved, location). This has the potential to help projects more accurately target and recruit appropriate participants who will invest and retain over time and may reveal situational factors that lead to change in attachment shape or intensity via program engagement. Drawing from this knowledge, citizen science programs and other organizations with a participant base focused on the environment and environmentalism will be better equipped to harness the “place-embedded agency” of participants to advance effective, situated, and sustainable place-based solutions (Hakkarainen et al. 2022).

Although our results compare favorably to those of Raymond et al. (2010), suggesting that place-specific components of nature bonding and self-identity are strong attachment catalysts across a wide variety of settings, these results do not represent a complete or generalizable set of attachment constructs and are not intended to be used for replication without modification. Research has demonstrated that people situated within a broad and diverse range of cultural, social, economic, and natural contexts all experience a sense of place, yet there is no such thing as a universal sense of place. Place attachment and meaning are inherently personal and context-specific and thus the “shape” of attachment exhibited among this population will not necessarily resonate with those in other settings.

Nevertheless, we hypothesize that in out-of-doors settings, three broad interstitial axes complementing the three-pole model would be the act of the activity itself (in our case, SA), the community of practice conducting the activity (in our case, SCB), and a component of deep time (potentially) connecting modern forms of friends and especially family to the self. The frame for our work was out-of-doors environmental citizen science, but another place-based shared activity could be within art, sports, gardening, or hunting. Understanding how shared activity surrounds and completes the three poles of place attachment, and whether the interstitial dimensions we have uncovered here are robust or idiosyncratic, is an obvious question. We believe that the methodology outlined here, and the processes involved in developing a dimensional quantitative tool to assess place attachment with greater depth, will transfer to other contexts because it is designed to recognize difference, diversity, and variety. Furthermore, in acknowledging the limitations of quantitative measures to undercover the nuances of place attachment and meaning, we hope this framework provides greater opportunity for mixed-methods approaches that integrate qualitative and quantitative data.

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