The influence of plant diversity on people’s perception and aesthetic appreciation of grassland vegetation

Abstract

The influence of plant diversity on people's perception and aesthetic appreciation of grassland vegetation AbstractThe conservation of biodiversity critically depends on the value that humans attach to it. Apart from an ecological and economic value, an aesthetic value has often been assigned to biodiversity. However, it is not known whether lay people appreciate the diversity of species and not just certain individual species or nature as a whole. We studied in a series of experiments and field studies people's perception and appreciation of species diversity. We presented meadow-like arrays of different species richness and evenness but random species composition to lay people and asked them to estimate plant species richness and rank the arrays by attractiveness. The experiments were complemented by two larger-scale field studies using natural meadows. Both in the experiments and the field studies the mean perception of species richness by people increased with true species richness, but was slightly overestimated at low and increasingly underestimated at high diversity levels. Lay people's aesthetic appreciation of both the experimental grassland arrays and the natural meadows increased with true species richness.Communities consisting of the same number of species were perceived to be more species-rich and were appreciated more when their evenness was high. Our results demonstrate that plant diversity in itself is attractive to humans. The current reduction of the diversity of grasslands due to intensification of management may thus reduce the attractiveness of regions where grasslands are a dominant feature of the landscape. This could have negative consequences for tourism and may add an economic argument for the conservation of biodiversity in grasslands.Lindemann-Matthies, P., Junge, X., Matthies, D. 2010. Experimental evidence for human preference of biodiversity in grassland ecosystems. The influence of plant diversity on people's perception and aesthetic appreciation of grassland vegetation AbstractThe conservation of biodiversity critically depends on the value that humans attach to it.Apart from an ecological and economic value, an aesthetic value has often been assigned to biodiversity. However, it is not known whether lay people appreciate the diversity of speciesand not just certain individual species or nature as a whole. We studied in a series of experiments and field studies people's perception and appreciation of species diversity. We presented meadow-like arrays of different species richness and evenness but random species composition to lay people and asked them to estimate plant species richness and rank the arrays by attractiveness. The experiments were complemented by two larger-scale field studies using natural meadows. Both in the experiments and the field studies the mean perception of species richness by people increased with true species richness, but was slightly overestimated at low and increasingly underestimated at high diversity levels. Lay people's aesthetic appreciation of b...

Effects of biodiversity and environment-related attitude on perception of urban green space

“…When flower diversity was experimentally increased in small public gardens in Paris, the visitors did not perceive any change in diversity before and after the manipulation although the participants expressed a preference for species richness (Shwartz et al 2014). In another experimental study, Lindemann-Matthies et al (2010) found that lay people appreciated species-rich, high-diversity grass communities more than species-poor ones. However, their study was performed on a rather small scale.…”

Can We Model the Scenic Beauty of an Alpine Landscape?

“…The visual character of landscapes affects human well-being in different ways, especially in terms of aesthetic appreciation, human health, and human relations [6][7][8]. Hence, an attractive environment can support a positive future development in Europe's mountain areas, especially, in terms of economic benefits related to tourism, as mountain landscapes are appealing environments [4,[9][10][11]. Scenic beauty assessments and modeling approaches, which consider recent landscape dynamics, can support the local decision makers and landscape planners towards a sustainable development [4,12].…”

“…The biological dimension includes evolutionary principles, describing landscape composition and scenic beauty through visual concepts or attributes [9,[19][20][21]. With regard to Alpine landscapes, several authors discussed attributes like naturalness, wilderness, and diversity and studied the consequences of land-use processes of intensification, abandonment, and reforestation [4,9,19,22]. Tveit et al [20] define naturalness as the closeness to a preconceived natural state.…”

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Public Support for Wetland Restoration: What is the Link With Ecosystem Service Values?

“…Scholars studying landscape perceptions and preferences argue that people do not only form opinions about the landscape on the basis of the biophysical characteristics of that landscape, but also by 'mental images' (Lindemann-Matthies et al 2010) or conceptions of what a landscape should look like (Terkenli 2001). Such mental images may be based on information, experiences, knowledge, institutions, and social networks.…”