A public good conservation approach for underwater cultural heritage management through citizen science

Abstract

To better understand the motivations, cultural heritage protection preferences, background, and characteristics of participants in the GIRT citizen science program, a survey was administered to 119 trained GIRT volunteers (SM Table 1). The survey started on 1 January 2019 and closed on 30 June 2020. A link to the survey was sent to all GIRT volunteers trained between 1 July 2018 and 30 June 2020, who were invited to participate in the survey. <br> The 39-question online GIRT motivation survey was distributed through Survey Monkey and covered five main areas. Demographic information was included in the survey to understand the characteristics of the volunteers, to ensure that collected data could be interoperable, and to facilitate comparative analysis with other diver surveys. The survey also included other questions aimed at gaining a better understanding of individual participant background in volunteering, interest in heritage, support for the protection of heritage, and experience in science and conservation. <br> However, to ensure privacy, no individual is identifiable from the survey. The 39 questions were structured using four different possible responses: Five-point Likert scale (18), Yes/No responses (7), drop down selection (13), and one free text field for a numerical response. The initial purpose of each question is included in SM Table 1. The survey data were exported to SPSS 25 and descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data.