Recently, there has been a big push on to recruit more people into birding. You may have heard about the Global Birding Initiative called Pledge to Fledge (www.globalbirdinginitiative.org/blog/). There have been lots of other similar efforts to recruit more birders over the last couple of decades. The reasons for wanting to recruit and retain more birders are both numerous and very important. For example, many folks believe that by getting people interested in birding, it will instill in those people a passion for the conservation of wildlife species and the habitats they depend on. This will then result in financial and political support for conservation and maybe even some people who are willing to put their labor into conservation activities. Also, getting people outside and connected to nature is believed to have both physical benefits (e.g., exercise from walking) and mental benefits (e.g., restoration of our ability for focused attention in school and at work). From my perspective, all of these efforts are very much needed and very well-intentioned.
The big question is: how do you know when a birder is recruited or retained? This is more than just an esoteric question. There are very practical reasons for thinking about this question and how to answer it. One practical reason has to do with the idea of evaluating recruitment programs. If individuals and organizations are going to spend time and money on birder recruitment and retention, they need to have some way of knowing whether they are successful or not. Another practical reason has to do with the supposed link to conservation that I mentioned in the paragraph above.
Historically, social science research has focused on participation in singular activities as indices to recruitment and retention. For example, recruitment into citizen science programs is indicated by folks being willing to provide data. Recruitment into hunting and fishing has been indicated by people being willing to buy a license to do those activities. Similarly, recruitment into birding has been indicated by a willingness to go birding.
Social science researchers have used a number of very good scientific foundations as the basis for trying to understand participation. Both the Theory of Reasoned Action and the Theory of Planned Behavior rely on measuring attitudes, beliefs, and norms as a way of predicting behavior. Theory measuring motivations and constraints is used to understand peoples’ personal goals and any barriers to participating in activities that help meet those goals. A multiple-satisfactions approach has been used to try to understand how participation in activities helps people meet their personal goals. Also, activity innovation-adoption has been used in an effort to understand how people move from becoming aware of an activity to being interested in it to trying it out to finally continuing to participate in it. All of these foundations are scientifically valid and can help shed much light on participation.
There are some shortcomings of using participation in some activity as an index to recruitment and retention. First, some people who participate derive no personal meaning from participation and are very likely to switch to some other activity when given the chance. On the other hand, some people who participate sporadically or even stop participating permanently still think of themselves as having an identity linked to the behavior. Further, whether a person participates in any particular activity is not indicative of that person’s deep-seated, underlying values.
Instead of using participation as an index to recruitment and retention, research with which I have been involved has used the development of a self-perception or identity as an index. This makes sense to me because people seek out opportunities to participate in activities that are consistent with, or help reinforce, their identity (e.g., as a birder). In this way, participation in birding does not define whether someone is a birder. Rather, their self-perception as a birder comes from having been changed from one category (e.g., non-birder) to another (e.g., birder). Also, and very important in terms of recruitment and retention, it is other people who already hold the identity of being birders who facilitate opportunities for a person to have the right experiences in the right social contexts that fuel the change from one category to the other, and thus help produce the identity.
Please check out my earlier post about how people become birders to learn more about birder identity development. http://modelbirder.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-do-people-become-birders.html
Go bird!
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