Perceptions about mangrove restoration and ecosystem services to inform ecosystem-based restoration in Large Xiamen Bay, China

Abstract

Mangroves provide a multitude of ecosystem services that are threatened due to extensive mangrove degradation globally. Restoration actions have been receiving growing attention for reinstating some of these critically important ecosystem services. Understanding societal perceptions about ecosystem restoration and the services that can be enhanced via them, is critical for designing and implementing effective and equitable landscape and seascape restoration actions. Here, we elicit societal perceptions toward mangrove restoration, and the perceived importance of the ecosystem services it can provide, through 1600 surveys with coastal residents in the Large Xiamen Bay (China). We focus on four districts with different environmental and socioeconomic characteristics, and elicit the perceived importance of mangrove ecosystem services through the Analytical Hierarchy Process. Subsequently we identify the factors affecting these perceptions through regression analysis and redundancy analysis. Overall, the analysis suggests that coastal residents in the four districts have diverse perceptions about the importance of mangrove ecosystem services, with provisioning services receiving higher weights in most cases. Conversely respondents supporting and willing to pay for mangrove restoration tend to assign greater importance to regulating services such as climate regulation and coastal protection. Notably, some of the characteristics of the respondents and their districts significantly influence some of these perceptions. This evidence-based understanding of what affects the perceptions about mangrove restoration (and the ecosystem services it provides) can inform the development of landscape-scale restoration actions that are fit for purpose and can contribute to achieving the restoration goals of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration and the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.