(521h) Impacts of the Hybrid Format on the Attendee Demographics and Carbon Footprint of Scientific Conferences

Technical conferences are critical to the professional development of STEM students and professionals at any career stage, allowing participants to engage in professional development, continuous learning, and networking. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the prevalence of the virtual conference format greatly increased and was shown to have advantages such as lower attendee cost, lower conference carbon footprint, and the increased representation of individuals from underrepresented genders and institutions. Despite these benefits, many attendees prefer a conference with an in-person component as certain conference activities, particularly networking, were limited by the virtual format. One approach to provide attendees with in-person conference activities while reaping some benefits of the of virtual conference format could be to conduct “hybrid” conferences that involve the simultaneous participation of in-person and virtual attendees. In this work, the impact of the hybrid format was investigated for four conferences: the 2022 North American Membrane Society Conference (NAMS 2022), the 16^th Deep-Sea Biology Symposium (16DSBS), and the 240^th and 241^st American Astronomical Society Conferences (AAS 240 and AAS 241), each with different percentages of participants that attended online. For the NAMS 2022 conference, the hybrid format resulted in a 31.5% reduction in carbon footprint (~154 Tonnes CO2e) compared to a hypothetical case where all attendees went to the conference in person. Online attendance also provided a more financially accessible mode of conference attendance; the average online attendee paid only $142 to attend NAMS 2022, whereas the cost for the average in-person attendee was $1877. Furthermore, the online attendee population at NAMS 2022 contained a larger percentage of international attendees, women, and undergraduates than the in-person attendee population, suggesting that the offering of an online attendance option bolstered the involvement of these groups. Similar analyses will be discussed for the 16DSBS, AAS 240, and AAS 241 conferences to further determine the impact of the hybrid format on attendee demographics and conference carbon footprint as well as the magnitude of these impacts in relation to the percentage of participants that attended online.