市民科学と生物多様性
Hello everyone, SCIEN-SPOT is a podcast that shines a spotlight on the latest scientific
technology from Japan. Your host is REN from SCIEN-TALK. Have you ever used a smartphone app
to take photos of rare creatures you spotted in town and posted them? Well, it turns out that
this simple act of posting could potentially contribute significantly to biodiversity
conservation, a crucial effort for the future of our planet. Today on SCIEN-SPOT, we'll dive into
the cutting edge of citizen science, exploring the surprising impact of incentives on our behavior
based on the latest research from Osaka University. First, biodiversity refers to the rich
individuality of living organisms or earth and the connection between them. It's considered at
three levels, ecosystems, species, and genes, and biodiversity conservation aims to protect
these natural systems and path them on the future generation. Why is it so important?
Because humans are also in part of nature's intricate web and the loss of biodiversity
can destabilize the very foundation of our lives. To protect this biodiversity, accurate information
on where, what kind of species, and how many are living is essential. Traditionally, surveys have
市民科学の重要性
been conducted mainly by experts, but this requires an enormous amount of time and effort.
This is where citizen science comes into play. And citizen science is an activity where ordinary
citizens, who are not professional scientists, participate in scientific research. Especially
with the smartphone apps, there's a great potential to collect the very amount of observation data
from people nationwide efficiently. However, how can we encourage a large number of people to
continue posting photos through apps? This is where the design of incentives methods to encourage
participation becomes crucial. Previously, the impact of incentives like monetary rewards or
donations to environmental organizations on people's behavior has been discussed mainly theoretically.
But there have been very few large-scale experimental studies using real-world
posting behavior globally. A research team led by a specially appointed professor
from Osaka University and the National Institute for Environmental Studies
provided an answer to this important question. This conducted a large-scale demonstration
experiment in cooperation with Biome Inc., which operates the Biome Creature Collection app.
奨励策の影響
In this experiment, 830 app users who agreed to participate were randomly divided into three
groups. First, the donation-based incentive group. For each post, 10 yen was donated to
environmental organization. Second, the monetary incentive group. For each post, a monetary coupon
worth 10 yen was given. And third, the control group received no incentives at all. The posting
behavior of each group was then compared. The results were incredibly interesting.
First, in the monetary incentive group, the number of posts significantly increased. This might be
easy to imagine. If you make an effort to post, you get a direct benefit. On the other hand,
in the donation-based incentive group, no significant increase in the total number of
posts was observed. However, a crucial discovery was made here. This group showed a tendency to
increase the proportion of rare species posts. What does this mean? It indicates that the type
of incentive has the potential to change not only the quantity of posting behavior,
but also its content. That's the key finding of this research. Let's use an analogy from fishing.
The monetary incentive is like a reward system where you were told,
量 versus 質の影響
we'll pay you for every fish you catch, no matter what kind, just bring us a lot.
In this scenario, you'd probably aim for a common, easy-to-catch fish to maximize your quantity.
As a result, many fish are collected. In contrast, the donation-based incentive is similar to being
told, if you catch an endangered or specific rare fish, your achievement will contribute to
environmental protection. In this case, you might not catch many fish, but you'd likely
ignore common fish and actively seek out rare ones. When you successfully catch a rare fish,
the sense of accomplishment and contributing to society becomes the driving force behind your
action. This study process re-demonstrated this behavioral change, the quantity versus quality,
on a large scale in a real-world citizen science setting, making it the rarest study globally.
And this research finding provides concrete guidelines on how to promote information
gathering activities for biodiversity conservation. For example, when national and
local governments design monitoring activities in collaboration with citizens, they can now
potentially collect data more efficiently by tailoring incentives to their objectives.
インセンティブによるデータ収集
If they want to gather as much data as possible, monitoring incentives might be effective. If they
want to collect information on rare species, donation-based incentives might be the way to go.
Furthermore, this insight follows significant implications for businesses.
By providing the funds for these incentives, companies can encourage consumer-positive behavior,
which in turn contributes to biodiversity conservation as part of their corporate
social responsibility efforts. This represents a highly realistic and promising avenue for
private companies to actively participate in biodiversity conservation.
That's all for today's SciencePod. This podcast is broadcast daily on weekday morning in both
Japanese and English. I hope today's discovery has given you a new perspective on how we can
all contribute to biodiversity conservation through citizen science, even just a little.
I'd love for you to listen to the podcast and post your notes and thoughts with the hashtag
SciencePod. See you next time!
