Abstract
Ecosystem service assessments have increasingly been used to support environmental management policies, mainly based on biophysical and economic indicators. However, few studies have coped with the social-cultural dimension of ecosystem services, despite being considered a research priority. We examined how ecosystem service bundles and trade-offs emerge from diverging social preferences toward ecosystem services delivered by various types of ecosystems in Spain. We conducted 3,379 direct face-to-face questionnaires in eight different case study sites from 2007 to 2011. Overall, 90.5% of the sampled population recognized the ecosystem’s capacity to deliver services. Formal studies, environmental behavior, and gender variables influenced the probability of people recognizing the ecosystem’s capacity to provide services. The ecosystem services most frequently perceived by people were regulating services; of those, air purification held the greatest importance. However, statistical analysis showed that socio-cultural factors and the conservation management strategy of ecosystems (i.e., National Park, Natural Park, or a non-protected area) have an effect on social preferences toward ecosystem services. Ecosystem service trade-offs and bundles were identified by analyzing social preferences through multivariate analysis (redundancy analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis). We found a clear trade-off among provisioning services (and recreational hunting) versus regulating services and almost all cultural services. We identified three ecosystem service bundles associated with the conservation management strategy and the rural-urban gradient. We conclude that socio-cultural preferences toward ecosystem services can serve as a tool to identify relevant services for people, the factors underlying these social preferences, and emerging ecosystem service bundles and trade-offs.
Highlights
The ecosystem services concept has been increasingly used by academics, researchers and policy-makers [1,2] to support and inform environmental management and biodiversity conservation strategies [3,4]
We found a clear trade-off among provisioning services versus regulating services and almost all cultural services
We identified three ecosystem service bundles associated with the conservation management strategy and the rural-urban gradient
Summary
The ecosystem services concept has been increasingly used by academics, researchers and policy-makers [1,2] to support and inform environmental management and biodiversity conservation strategies [3,4]. Few studies have addressed socio-cultural preferences toward ecosystem services from the perspective of human values, attitudes, and beliefs while using a non-economic approach [12]. A non-economic evaluation offers ways of understanding the motivations underlying social preferences toward ecosystem services, thereby unraveling values that tend to be obscured by monetary languages [13,14]. Because ecosystem service assessments are determined by analyzing the effect of ecosystems and biodiversity on human well-being, it is necessary to understand the ways society benefits from nature and, the many reasons that societies value ecosystem services [15,16]. Identifying the reasons and motivations for protecting ecosystem services helps to understand which services are relevant for different stakeholders and which trade-offs need to be addressed when making decisions regarding land-use management [17]. A wetland is likely to be valued by fishermen primarily for its capacity to maintain the abundance of specific game fish species, by farmers for its ability to supply water for irrigation, by conservationists for their capacity to provide habitat for endangered and rare wildlife species, and by nature tourists for its capacity to provide recreation and aesthetic enjoyment [8,18]
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