Perceptions of ecosystem services: Comparing socio-cultural and environmental influences

Abstract

Ecosystem services such as food provisioning, climate regulation, nutrient cycling, or recreation in open landscapes underpin human wellbeing. They are highly dependent on land use, land cover and utilization pattern as well as environmental factors like climate, topography and soil. In consequence, ecosystem services supply shows a high spatial variability. However, it is less clear if the perception of the importance of ecosystem services is similarly heterogeneous in space and amongst societal actors. The aim of this large-scale study was to explore whether land cover and climate gradients as well as socio-cultural factors influence the perceptions of ecosystem services of four groups of societal actors: citizens, farmers, foresters and nature managers. Spatially explicit survey data of 3018 respondents allowed to gain insight into the distribution of perceived importance of 21 ecosystem services in the federal state of Bavaria, Germany together with the respondents’ socio-cultural characterisation (e.g. gender, education and hobbies in nature). Responses were analysed through descriptive statistics, redundancy analysis, and Generalized Linear Models. Results reveal that the perceived importance of many ecosystem services was consistently high across groups, although perception differed for some ecosystem services (e.g. production of energy plants and timber as well as recreation in urban green space). Compared to other actor groups, farmers attributed slightly lower importance to all ES except provisioning services. Socio-cultural factors better explained variability in perceived importance of ecosystem services than land cover and climate gradients. This might be either explained by the fact that the environmental gradients vary not strong enough in our case study or that they do not shape the perceptions of respondents. A limitation of the study is that the sample of respondents obtained is not representative for the population, but biased towards persons interested in the topics of the survey. Still the consensus indicated by the overall positive perception of ecosystem services among respondents highlights the integrative potential of ecosystem services when included in decision-making.

Improving Agri-environmental Schemes: Suggestions from Farmers and Nature Managers in a Central European Region

“…Although nature managers may not be scientists, the majority in our sample hold a university degree, indicating a scientific background. Similarly, in a study on ecosystem services perceptions in Bavaria, Germany, Thiemann et al ( 2022 ) found that habitat services were perceived to be very important for over 90% of the nature managers that responded to the survey.…”

“…We also collected data on socio-demographic and sectoral factors, such as farm management. Other parts of the survey focused on perceptions of ecosystem services (Thiemann et al 2022 ), landscape elements (Küchen et al 2023 ), and climate change (Landwehr et al 2023 ). The mentioned studies include all four sampled societal actor groups (comprising foresters and citizens).…”

“…Nature managers (only online sampling) represent a variety of actors working or volunteering in organizations and agencies related to nature protection and management of greenspaces (Supplementary Table B1 ). For detailed information on the survey structure and sampling process, see Thiemann et al ( 2022 ). In this study, we focused on the open-ended question: “What improvements to existing or new funding opportunities should there be for the protection of nature and landscapes in Bavaria?”.…”