I’m trying to see if anyone has written about or done a study on the economic value of iNaturalist. The closest thing I’m aware of is this Theobald et al. 2015 paper (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320714004029), which doesn’t discuss iNaturalist specifically.
I imagine you could do some kind of calculation based on the in-kind hourly rate for volunteer work, and then combine that with the average time it takes to submit an iNaturalist observation? If anyone has done any work on this subject, I’d be interested to read it.
Realistically, you’d need to figure out the economic value for observers and identifiers. Observers get the records, but identifiers are usually the ones to find the really interesting species in the mountain of observations. Plus identifiers are putting in a lot more time than observers.
At least in my mind, I see the economic value more broadly than the value of work contributed. As someone who likes to invent things, I know hours invested in a project at my hourly rate is a very poor proxy for actual value generated. I don’t expect time invested to accurately represent the value of any given iNaturalist observation.
I believe that iNaturalist observations have unevenly distributed economic value. For instance, some iNaturalist observations represent the first records of invasive species and can be used to identify and eliminate invasive threats before they can cause thousands or millions of dollars of damage. In contrast, most iNaturalist observations represent “expected” data—known species at an expected time and place, without any notable morphological or behavioral deviances. The measurable economic value of such observations may be negative (data costs money and energy to store). I suspect it’s closer to a net zero, as there are hard to measure economic benefits to most observations. For instance, increased quality of life for the observer and improvement of skills for the identifier probably have a positive economic impact.
TL;DR, I don’t think multiplying hours by a dollars-per-hour rate would yield an accurate economic value of iNaturalist.
This is not directed at the original poster or anyone in particular.
I believe it is a great mistake to economise or commodify some things, and Nature is definitely one of them. I do understand where this question is coming from, especially with many stakeholders wanting to know the economic value of some aspect of Nature.
I suspect economic value of all these data can’t begin to be measured for several decades yet, when scientists might be using the data to determine how and where species might have moved or otherwise changed because of climate change.
Triple bottom line?
The value of the nature we observe
The value of volunteer lifetimes
Then the numbers from iNat infrastructure and staff. Power supply at all locations across the world, carbon footprint, water use, servers running 24/7.
Unless we are talking about observers who go looking for the “really interesting” species and add initial IDs accordingly. Not every observer feels the need to upload every ant or pine cone they see.
I wasn’t criticizing his use of iNat. I was responding specifically to the comment that “Not every observer feels the need to upload every ant or pine cone they see” which is clearly dismissive of those who choose to do this.
I was also challenging the implicit claim that fewer observations necessarily means better quality and more unusual/interesting species (it does not) or that the observer will always be able to provide a specific ID if they would just take a bit more time (this is also not the case).
Creating a dichotomy between high-volume, low-quality observers and low-volume, high-quality observers neither reflects the variety of ways that people use iNat, nor does it help with the challenge of how to find the interesting observations in the flood of common ones (which by definition will always be far more numerous than the rare ones).
Now, I am not saying that all the credit should go to IDers for recognizing the really rare and interesting finds, since these finds would not exist in the first place if observers did not take the time to document them, and in many cases observers are indeed aware that they have found something notable. It seems to me that it is a partnership to which multiple parties contribute in various ways, but each of them requires the other. Arguing about how to apportion the credit as though it is an either-or situation is thus counterproductive.
There is value in reporting a species every time you see it because that is data relevant to changes in populations. Look at the data collected by eBird for the inherent value in reporting the common as well as the unusual or rare.
What is the economic value of this question? There is more value in the process of discovery and documentation than can ever be quantified by a mere monetary value!
No, I agree with you that IDers shouldn’t get all the credit for recognizing rare or interesting observations. (Note that some IDers have found the opposite to be true in practice: that it is not particularly unusual for them not to get credited at all in scientific publications using iNat data. The structure of observations means that observers are somewhat more likely to be acknowledged, but this, too, varies.)
But you do see that there is a substantial and important difference between a) noting that, viewed collectively, the rare observations can easily get lost in the sheer numbers of common ones and b) drawing conclusions about individual behavior based on this, yes?
Common species are, by definition, common. This means that even if users are not “observing every pine cone they see”, it will always be much easier to make observations of common species, simply because the likelihood of seeing one is so much higher. If 50 users join iNat and each make 10 observations, chances are that most of these 500 observations will be common species – even if they have taken good photos and not made beginner mistakes like observing cultivated plants. Even if every observer were to only observe common species once (to add them to their iNat life list) or once per location, the common species still would vastly far outnumber the rare ones.
Many people seem to be claiming that there shouldn’t be a value on nature or our observations/identifications, but there actually is one. If we go to the literature there are many reviews that try to quantify the value of nature in terms of economic services (e.g. does this plant increase the water quality of this water that is going to be used for human consumption? does this seagrass act as a nursery habitat for an edible and marketable fish?), so there actually has to be an economic value in terms of worth for every observation. But as other people said, these values are unevenly distributed. Casual observations of unidentifiable organisms that have been in the “unknown” category for years may have a small economic value. However, research grade observations with the approval of several identifiers and which have been sent to GBIF do have a value, as they will probably be used each time that someone downloads GBIF data for whatever purpose.
But, we also need to consider the total cost of storing all the iNat data, divided by the amount of observations. Thus, we should consider the net value of each observation, as there is a small negative quantity related to storage and maintenance that needs to be acounted for.
