Does Terminology Matter? Effects of the Citizen Science Label on Participation in a Wildlife Conservation Online Platform

Despite concerns that sociocultural connotations of the term citizen science may discourage engagement with such projects among certain groups, little empirical evidence is available about the behavioral effects of this terminology. One specific area of concern is the persistent gender gap in citizen science participation. A two-week field experiment (N = 699) with users of an online platform framed as either a citizen science or an environmental stewardship project examined framing and gender effects on engagement, sense of community (SoC), and indicators of pro-environmental interest. Results revealed no direct effects of the frame. Rather, framing interacted with participants’ perceptions of the extent to which the project was about citizen science or environmental stewardship. Perceiving the project as environmental stewardship predicted higher engagement and environmental interest among women than among men, and greater SoC only among men assigned to the environmental stewardship frame. A key implication is that the congruence between a project’s label and people’s experiences in the project may be more important than how the project is labeled.