Stakeholders’ motivations for supporting environmental citizen science

Citizen science is moving from traditional scientist-public partnerships to larger multi-partner enterprises engaging new sectors of society. For citizen science to recruit and retain stakeholders, it is essential to understand what motivates partners to facilitate projects. Twenty-six people from 10 different stakeholder groups in the UK were interviewed about their personal and organisational motivations for supporting environmental citizen science. Template thematic analysis revealed five key motivational themes: (1) business-centric,  (2) participant-driven, (3) scientific, (4) personal and (5) environmental motivations. These findings suggest that stakeholders have a range of motivations that go beyond the dominant narrative of science and the environment.