Nowadays, citizens collaborate increasingly with scientists in citizen science (CS) projects on environmental issues. CS projects often have educational goals and aim to increase citizens' knowledge with the ultimate goal of fostering positive attitudes toward science. To date, little is known about the extent to which CS projects strengthen the positive interrelationship between knowledge and attitudes. Based on previous research, it has been suggested that the knowledge–attitude relationship could be further examined by focusing on different aspects: (1) different attitudinal domains, (2) topic-specific knowledge, and (3) its direction. Our study contributes to the clarification of the interrelation between scientific knowledge and attitudes toward science within the specific domain of urban wildlife ecology using cross-lagged panel analyses. We collected survey data on five attitudinal domains, topic-specific knowledge, scientific reasoning abilities, and epistemological beliefs from N = 303 participants before and after they participated in a CS project on urban wildlife ecology. Participants collected and analyzed data on terrestrial mammals in a German metropolitan city. Our results provide evidence for the relationship between knowledge and attitudes due to the topic-specificity of knowledge in CS projects (e.g., wildlife ecology). Our method provided a rigorous assessment of the direction of the knowledge–attitude relationship and showed that topic-specific knowledge was a predictor of more positive attitudes toward science.

中文翻译：

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了解科学就是热爱科学？揭示城市野生动物生态公民科学中知识和科学态度之间的因果关系

如今，公民越来越多地与公民科学 (CS) 项目中的科学家就环境问题进行合作。CS 项目通常有教育目标，旨在增加公民的知识，最终目标是培养对科学的积极态度。迄今为止，人们对 CS 项目在多大程度上加强知识和态度之间的积极相互关系知之甚少。基于以往的研究，有人提出可以通过关注不同方面来进一步研究知识态度关系：（1）不同的态度领域，（2）特定主题的知识，以及（3）其方向。我们的研究有助于使用交叉滞后面板分析澄清城市野生动物生态特定领域内科学知识和科学态度之间的相互关系。N  = 303 名参与者，他们参与了一个关于城市野生动物生态的 CS 项目之前和之后。参与者收集并分析了德国大城市中陆生哺乳动物的数据。由于 CS 项目（例如野生动物生态学）中知识的主题特异性，我们的结果为知识和态度之间的关系提供了证据。我们的方法对知识-态度关系的方向进行了严格的评估，并表明特定主题的知识是对科学更积极态度的预测指标。