Citizen-Based Air Quality Monitoring: The Impact on Individual Citizen Scientists and How to Leverage the Benefits to Affect Whole Regions

Teresa Schaefer; Barbara Kieslinger; Claudia Magdalena Fabian

doi:10.5334/cstp.245

Figures & Tables

The three testbed areas and their O₃ concentrations (EEA 2015).

Different contextual settings in the three testbed regions.

Table 1

Number of devices and interviewees.

	Spain		Austria		Italy
	2017	2018	2017	2018	2017	2018
No. Volunteer devices	20	20	12	12	14	14
No. Reference devices	6	6	3	3	6	6
No. Interviewees male	9	9	3	4	5	5
No. Interviewees female	4	3	1	5	1	4

Table 2

Socio-demographic profiles of interviewees. When observing total note that some hosts were interviewed twice, in both 2017 and 2018.

	Age Group	Male	Female	Profession
Spain	26–35	1		Teacher
	26–35		1	Homemaker
	36–45	5		3 farmers, 2 environmental scientists
	36–45		2	Cinematographic producer, university professor
	46–55	2		Owner catering company, plumber
	46–55		0
	56+	3		2 retired persons, university professor
	56+		2	Retired person, teacher
Austria	26–35	0
	26–35		0
	36–45	1		Head of department (local authority)
	36–45		3	2 project managers (NGOs), head of department (museum)
	46–55	1		Coach and entrepreneur
	46–55		1	Head of department (local authority)
	56+	2		2 retired persons
	56+		1	Organic farmer
Italy	26–35	2		Laboratory technician, research fellow
	26–35		0
	36–45	1		Salesman
	36–45		2	Teacher, homemaker
	46–55	1		Teacher
	46–55		1	Freelance
	56+	2		Retired teacher, manager
	56+		2	Farmer, retired person
TOTAL		21	15

Table 3

Contextual setting and outcomes in the three testbeds.

	Spain	Italy	Austria
Testbed size	One closed valley	Three large regions	Two large regions
Source of pollutant	defined large metropolitan area (Barcelona)	undefined several urban and industrial areas	undefined several urban and industrial areas across country borders
Embedded in environmental agency	strong presence of environmental NGO long history of grass-roots activities	strong presence of environmental NGO	no local presence of environmental NGO
Local activities accompanying the campaign	workshops with politicians, citizens, and other local NGOs local ozone exhibitions contributions in local TV and newspaper meetings with decisions makers in Barcelona	contributions in local TV and newspaper	local ozone exhibitions contribution in local newspaper
Previous knowledge and awareness of hosts	low in all three testbeds
Individual benefits of hosts	increased knowledge personal awareness diffusion of information on the topic in local communities
Regional benefits	raised awareness on ozone in the whole valley ozone data are shown on TV and the public place discussions with originators of pollutants in Barcelona initiated the readiness of the municipality to buy further ozone measurement devices	potential regional impact not perceived open issues raised like more communication, more devices in one region, and increased visibility of data on public places and media	potential impacts identified and discussed open issues raised, e.g., more public visibility of data (also reference data), more devices and communication the interest of one municipality to further experiment with low-cost devices

Citizen-Based Air Quality Monitoring: The Impact on Individual Citizen Scientists and How to Leverage the Benefits to Affect Whole Regions

Figures & Tables

Figure 1

Figure 2

Table 1

Table 2

Table 3

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