ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE: NEW INTEGRATIVE WAYS TO CONNECT THE PROVINCIAL CIVIL PROTECTION SERVICE AND CITIZEN SCIENCE

Climate change poses unprecedented challenges for societies, requiring adaptive responses that go beyond technical solutions to embrace governance innovations and the active participation of citizens. This dissertation investigates how citizen science (CS) can be integrated into local civil protection systems as a form of participatory risk governance, with a particular focus on psychosocial processes that enable or hinder engagement. Informed by Science and Technology Studies (STS) and post-normal science (PNS), the research adopts an interdisciplinary perspective that brings together insights from psychology, the social sciences, and governance studies. The work unfolds through four complementary studies, organized into two parts. The first part lays the theoretical foundations, while the second presents three empirical studies that examine CS practices in local contexts, analyzing both barriers and opportunities for citizen engagement in risk governance. An introductory chapter outlines the guiding concepts and rationale of the research, providing a roadmap for the subsequent analyses. The first review (Study 1) analyses 52 publications to assess psychology’s contribution to climate governance. The results indicate that psychological scholarship has enriched interdisciplinary debates, yet theoretical specificity remains underdeveloped, and relational as well as systemic dimensions of governance are often neglected. This review underscores the need for psychologists to engage more deeply with interdisciplinary collaborations and ecological perspectives in order to address climate-related challenges. The second review (Study 2) conceptualises the interface between CS and climate governance through the analysis of 44 studies. The findings reveal a reciprocal relationship between CS practices and governance arrangements as enabling frameworks. Psychosocial dynamics, social justice considerations, and digital innovation are identified as transversal themes warranting further inquiry. The empirical core begins with a comparative case study (Study 3a) of two municipalities in the Brenta-Bacchiglione catchment, in the Province of Padua, involved in a pioneer project called citizen observatory (CO) for flood risk management. Results highlight barriers to citizen engagement, such as risk denial, resistance to change, and a double-bind between citizens and institutions, alongside enabling factors including experiential learning, mobilization of flood memory, and broad environmental awareness. Complementarily, a survey of 53 civil protection volunteers in Padua (Study 3b) underscores their potential role as epistemic agents situated between institutions and communities. The research highlights volunteers’ awareness of climate change and their strong support for proactive risk management. Volunteers emphasized the importance of education, experiential engagement, and trust-building, while also recognizing major challenges, including low public preparedness, institutional mistrust, and their concerns about role overload. Non-technical skills, such as inclusive dialogue, mediation and emotional reflexivity, were deemed critical for fostering meaningful engagement. The final study (Study 4) investigates the transposition of the Measure Your City initiative from the Netherlands to Norway. The analysis shows that while autonomous CS can be a powerful driver of grassroots engagement, attempts at replication face obstacles related to coordination, maintenance, institutional support, and broader contextual conditions. This case illustrates the complexity of defining success and failure in CS initiatives and yields transferable lessons for sustaining participatory projects across contexts.