Abstract
Urbanization has impacted biodiversity and ecosystems at a global scale. At the same time, it has been recognized as a driver of the physical and emotional gap between humans and nature. The lack of direct contact with nature can have a negative impact on several aspects of human well-being and change knowledge and attitudes of people towards the environment. However, this phenomenon is still poorly understood in megacities outside developed countries. Here, we explore the relationship between ecological knowledge and self-reported well-being in an important urban park in Santiago, Chile. We conducted semi-structured surveys of park users to explore their beliefs, preferences, ecological knowledge of plants and birds, and self-reported well-being. Citizens associated urban parks mainly with “nature,” and particularly with the presence of trees and plants. Trees were recognized as the most relevant elements of urban parks; in turn, birds were ranked as the less relevant. Regarding formal ecological knowledge, respondents correctly identified an average of 2.01 plants and 2.44 birds out of a total of 10 for each taxon, and exotic species were more likely to be recognized. Park users also reported high scores for self-reported well-being. Interestingly, variance of self-reported well-being scores tended to increase at low levels of ecological knowledge of trees, but no significant relationship was detected with knowledge of birds, nor native species. Ecological knowledge of trees was positively related to self-reported well-being. Results suggest that parks can positively contribute to bring people closer to nature in middle-income countries. Improving ecological knowledge can be critical to restore the relationship between humans and nature in megacities.
Highlights
A relationship between nature and human well-being was initially proposed (e.g., [19]), it was not until the last decade that pathways and mechanisms through which humans engage with nature have been addressed
We explored the relationship between ecological knowledge and self-reported well-being in a highly concurred urban park in downtown Santiago, Chile
Even though the urban area has developed towards the most biodiverse Mediterranean zone of Chile, urban parks are not remnants from natural areas since they were built in the last century during the centenary celebrations, using exotic flora
Summary
A relationship between nature and human well-being was initially proposed (e.g., [19]), it was not until the last decade that pathways and mechanisms through which humans engage with nature have been addressed. Cameron et al [20] reported this relationship between well-being and perceived biodiversity in urban parks and suggested that other factors such as the ability to ‘notice beauty in nature’ may modulate this relationship This can be attributed to the limited ability of people who live in cities to recognize local animal and plant species [21,22,23,24]. Cox and Gaston [27] reported a strong correlation between the number of correctly identified bird species and a self-reported connection to nature This evidence suggests that ecological knowledge may be a crucial factor underpinning the relationship between human well-being and nature [13]. We predicted that a higher level of self-reported well-being relates to greater ability to recognize species
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