Ciência cidadã na Amazônia : entendendo a retenção de voluntários no monitoramento da pesca através do modelo captura-recaptura

Abstract

Citizen science favors the creation of spaces for dialogue between different forms of knowledge, promoting the involvement and participation of society in the design of scientific research, data collection, data analysis and in the dissemination of results, on a large geographical and temporal scale. As part of the Citizen Science for the Amazon project, a mobile application called Ictio was developed, used mainly by artisanal fishermen, students, and traders in five countries of the Amazon basin, as a tool to record migratory fish catches, generating an open access database. In this study, I applied the Cormack-Jolly-Seber capture-recapture model in order to estimate the probability of volunteer retention and detectability, which was termed the probability of reuse of the app in its pilot phase from April 2018 to December 2019. The covariates of basin, time between sampling occasions, app version, number of lists submitted by the volunteer, and internet access at the fishing registration site were included. In addition, the engagement strategies used in the implementation of Ictio were identified. The best fit models indicated that the probability of volunteer retention is different in each basin and for each time, while the probability of application reuse is influenced by the number of lists submitted by each basin. Furthermore, seven volunteer engagement strategies were identified. This research presents an innovative approach to quantifying volunteer retention in a citizen science initiative, providing insight into the variables behind it, important for mobilizing people towards conservation or pro-science actions, as well as for managing a citizen science project.