Evaluation of a Structure Providing Cultural Ecosystem Services in Forest Recreation: Quantitative Text Analysis of Essays by Participants

Suguru Hirahara

doi:10.3390/f12111546

Abstract

Cultural ecosystem services are nonmaterial benefits that individuals acquire from the ecosystem, such as recreation, aesthetic enjoyment, and tourism. The quantification of cultural services is considered difficult to accurately make compared to other forest ecosystem services. Although some studies evaluate cultural services from forest recreation, “simple quantification” based on easy-to-obtain data is criticized for disregarding the local context and missing essential details. Therefore, this study evaluates a structure providing cultural services, and the local or detailed factors missed by simple quantification, while illustrating objective and statistical evidence with careful observations and a comprehension of local society. This study focuses on urban resident participation in natural resource management through recreational activities in Japanese mountain villages, using Fujiwara District, Minakami Town, Japan, as a case study, and by conducting a quantitative text analysis of 424 essays containing participants’ experiences and impressions. Using the software KH Coder, the Jaccard index is used to calculate co-occurrence relationships between frequently used words, visualizing the results in a network diagram. Additionally, several codes are added to keywords that characterize this case, and correlations between each code are examined. From the analysis, we discovered that social factors, such as interaction with comrades and locals, considerably influence participants’ positive emotions.

Highlights

IntroductionPublisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
This study focuses on the case in which urban residents participate in natural resource management through forest recreation in Japanese mountain villages using Fujiwara District, Minakami Town, Japan, as a case study because it contributes to both (1) and (2) stated in the category of “recreation and ecotourism”
18 years, 424 essays composed of 4388 paragraphs and 12,573 sentences were extracted

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Forests have traditionally provided people with timber and other products; “new” services, such as disaster prevention, climate change mitigation, and health promotion, are being noticed [1]. This adjective of “new” emanates not from changes of forest supplies, but rather changes in our demands, shifting from provisioning services to regulating and cultural services. Areas benefiting from forest ecosystem services expand to larger areas, including urban areas [2]

Results

Discussion

Conclusion