Building Knowledge Together: Citizen Science, Communication, and Trust | 5 - 6 October 2026, Berlin

Citizen science promises to democratise knowledge production, expand environmental monitoring and foster public engagement with science (Irwin, 1995; Hecker et al., 2018; Lewenstein, 2022; Pocock et al., 2017). Its success, however, hinges on trust among citizens, scientists and enabling institutions (Hager et al., 2021). A recurring finding across this literature is that trust is central to whether citizen science projects achieve their aims (Bonn et al., 2018; Hamm et al., 2019).
Yet scholarly treatments of trust in citizen science tend toward two reductive framings: trust as a static precondition, something actors either possess or lack before participation begins, or trust as a measurable outcome, whether consolidated or eroded by the experience (Möllering, 2006; Walker et al., 2021). In both cases, trust is collapsed into a single undifferentiated construct, examined at a single point in time and distrust is marginalised as an analytical category (Hamm et al., 2019). Crucially, distrust is not the mere absence of trust but an active orientation with its own dynamics, one that may surface institutional weaknesses, reveal unequal power relations and redirect collaborative trajectories in ways that are as generative as they are disruptive (Van de Walle & Six, 2014; Verhoest et al., 2024; Levis et al., 2024).
To address these gaps we propose a processual, multi-dimensional trust framework comprising three dimensions: epistemic (data credibility), relational (interpersonal orientations) and procedural (process legitimacy) to examine how trust dynamics shape and are shaped in citizen science over time. The framework conceptualises trust across these three analytically distinct but practically entangled dimensions.
Firstly, epistemic trust considers whether citizen-generated data and scientific knowledge are regarded as credible and actionable by the actors who engage with them, and whose knowledge is treated as counting in shared decisions (Fricker, 2007; Fritz et al., 2022). Epistemic trust concerns not only data quality but the deeper question of whose ways of knowing are recognised and valued within the collaboration.
Secondly, relational trust concerns the orientations of trust (positive expectations), distrust (negative expectations) or ambivalence that citizens hold toward scientists and institutional enablers (the public bodies, NGOs, research institutions and funders who host and coordinate participation) and vice versa (Rousseau et al., 1998; Van de Walle & Six, 2014; Wehn & Almomani, 2019; Spadaro et al., 2020). These orientations shape willingness to engage, share information and accept the vulnerabilities that collaboration requires. Relational trust is not stable across time; it is continually renegotiated as actors encounter each other through the work of the project.
Thirdly, procedural trust concerns whether actors experience the processes through which collaboration is structured as legitimate, responsive and worth sustained investment (Tyler 1990, 2006; Luhmann, 1979; Giddens, 1990). Tyler’s procedural justice scholarship strengthens the framework by demonstrating that perceptions of voice, neutrality, respectful treatment and trustworthy motives are constitutive of procedural legitimacy and, in turn, of sustained cooperation (Tyler, 1990, 2006).
Although these three dimensions are analytically distinguishable, they are entangled: distrust in data may destabilise relational orientations, relational distrust may condition actors’ willingness to engage with the process, and perceived procedural illegitimacy may reciprocally erode both epistemic and relational trust.
We illustrate the potential of the proposed conceptual framework through the more4nature context (Wehn & Pfeiffer, 2024), a Horizon Europe initiative fostering collaboration between citizen science initiatives and environmental authorities across four continents, where trust dynamics become observable as they unfold and are renegotiated through structured collaboration over time. By tracing how epistemic, relational and procedural trust evolve between actors in citizen science initiatives and environmental authorities, the paper speaks directly to how mutual trust is created, contested and repaired in citizen science initiatives. It offers a theoretical and methodological contribution for those seeking to move beyond snapshot assessments of trust toward longitudinal accounts of how collaboration is sustained, disrupted and renewed.