Exploring shared public perspectives on biodiversity attributes

Austen, Gail E.; Dallimer, Martin; Irvine, Katherine N.; Maund, Phoebe R.; Fish, Robert; Davies, Zoe G.

doi:10.1002/pan3.10237

Cited by 21 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 57 publications

(81 reference statements)

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“…For example, in public green spaces around England, higher levels of flower cover were associated with larger restorative effects (Hoyle et al, 2017). Similarly, in a survey of public attitudes towards biodiversity attributes, butterflies were found to be one of the most valued insect species (Austen et al, 2021), confirming our results. In another study of urban households, songbirds were especially appreciated by people out of all garden birds (Cox and Gaston, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…It has been argued that more positive overall reactions to plants versus birds or insects may be due to their static and thus more visible presence (Dallimer et al, 2012;Fuller et al, 2007). Some insects can also appear as a threat to people, evoking less positive emotions (Austen et al, 2021). This is also true of arachnids such as spiders which saw the lowest levels of sentiment expressed towards them in our study (Zvaríková et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

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Crowdsourced data and machine learning to measure cultural ecosystem services

Havinga

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Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are some of the most valuable contributions of ecosystems to human well-being. Nevertheless, these services are often underrepresented in ecosystem service assessments. Defining CES for the purposes of spatial quantification has been challenging because it has been difficult to spatially model CES. However, rapid increases in mobile network connectivity and the use of social media have generated huge amounts of crowdsourced data. This offers an opportunity to define and spatially quantify CES. We inventoried established CES conceptualisations and sources of crowdsourced data to propose a CES definition and typology for spatial quantification. Furthermore, we present the results of three spatial models employing crowdsourced data to measure CES on Texel, a coastal island in the Netherlands. Defining CES as information-flows best enables service quantification. A general typology of eight services is proposed. The spatial models produced distributions consistent with known areas of cultural importance on Texel. However, user representativeness and measurement uncertainties affect our results.Ethical considerations must also be taken into account. Still, crowdsourced data is a valuable source of information to define and model CES due to the level of detail available. This can encourage the representation of CES in ecosystem service assessments.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Crowdsourced data and machine learning to measure cultural ecosystem services

Havinga

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“…However, it is important to note that other aspects of nature experiences may not be captured by visual senses alone (e.g. sound, smell or touch), with growing evidence suggesting that aesthetic experiences and well‐being benefits can be further enhanced through non‐visual stimuli driven by increased biodiversity (Austen et al, 2021; Fisher et al, 2021; Franco et al, 2017). This suggests that while the positive biodiversity–perceptions relationships presented here are likely to be good indicators of human benefits, our value estimates from image‐based elicitation surveys associated with diverse coastal communities are likely to be conservative (Fisher et al, 2021; Franco et al, 2017; Schebella et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Species diversity enhances perceptions of urban coastlines at multiple scales

2022

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1. Biodiversity is increasingly understood as an important mediator of human aesthetic appreciation of scenes and landscapes, with implications for cultural services and well-being. However, the generality of biodiversity effects across affective emotions, scales and habitats remains unclear.2. Urban coastal intertidal habitats on seawalls and other artificial structures are expanding worldwide. Despite growing calls to prioritise biodiversity in urban coastal planning and management, the potential co-benefits determined by people's responses to biodiversity in these novel intertidal communities are unexplored.3. We investigated, using image-based questionnaires, how several facets of biodiversity influence how people perceive urban coastal structures at both landscape and close-up scales.4. Species richness strongly enhanced people's ratings of images for aesthetic appeal, interest and calming potential at both scales, but was more pronounced at the close-up scale. Species evenness also increased ratings at the close-up scale, while functional diversity (Rao's Q) was associated with a decline in aesthetic appeal and interest at the close-up scale, indicating that people can disfavour scenes dominated by species with contrasting traits. 5. Analysis of free-text assessments showed that people strongly and positively valued scenes that were perceived to be 'diverse', a response that was much more common when viewing scenes with high species richness. The underlying structure type also clearly affected appraisals, with more obviously engineered structures being perceived to be less natural and thus less desirable. 6. Our results show that biodiversity's effects on aesthetic appreciation extend to multiple affective emotions and to unfamiliar urban intertidal habitats, suggesting that managing these environments for biodiversity may simultaneously support aesthetic, educational and well-being benefits. Nevertheless, the sensitivity of responses to the facet of biodiversity and viewing scale in our results underlines the context dependency and complexity of people's perceptions of urban environments.

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“…It has explored vast stretches of the open sea (Blenckner et al, 2021; Fleming et al, 2019) alongside the micro worlds of the river corridor (Leigh et al, 2019). And it has encompassed the study of nature both near and far: the nearby nature of the local park and woodland (Austen et al, 2021; Hoyle et al, 2019); the hidden and mysterious nature of the ocean floor and; the luminous nature of the moon in the night sky (Kaikkonen & van Putten, 2021).…”

Section: Emerging Topics Themes and Emphasesmentioning

confidence: 99%