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Public perceptions and willingness to pay for cultural ecosystem services from urban forests

June 2023
Science Talks

DOI:10.1016/j.sctalk.2023.100253

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Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Urban forests provide diverse cultural ecosystem services such as leisure, aesthetic pleasure, physical and psychological benefits, and spiritual experience. As cultural ecosystem services are non-material values, limited research has measured and analyzed public perceptions of cultural ecosystem services. This talk presents a monetary valuation to assess the factors influencing public perceptions of cultural ecosystem services provided by urban forests. The presentation suggests that the willingness to pay survey results can show the relations between the valuation of cultural ecosystem services and variables including gender, income, education level, age, familiarity with forest, and willingness to pay. Moreover, it addresses that citizens' perspectives and their demands, willingness, and involvement in cultural ecosystem services can be analyzed which can be reflected in urban forest management.

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Public perceptions and willingness to pay for cultural ecosystem services

from urban forests

Jaewon Son

⁎,Somidh Saha

a,b

Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany

Institute of Geography and Geoecology (IFGG), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany

ABSTRACTARTICLE INFO

Keywords:

Cultural ecosystem services

Urban forests

Stakeholders' perceptions

Sociodemographic determinants

Willingness to pay

Nonmaterial values

Urban forests provide diverse cultural ecosystem services such as leisure, aesthetic pleasure, physical and psycholog-

ical beneﬁts, and spiritual experience. As cultural ecosystem services are non-material values, limited research has

measured and analyzed public perceptions of cultural ecosystem services. This talk presents a monetary valuation to

assess the factors inﬂuencing public perceptions of cultural ecosystem services provided by urban forests. The presen-

tation suggests that the willingness to pay survey results can show the relations between the valuation of cultural eco-

system services and variables including gender,income, education level, age,familiarity with forest, and willingness to

pay. Moreover, it addresses that citizens' perspectives and their demands, willingness, and involvement in cultural eco-

system services can be analyzed which can be reﬂected in urban forest management.

Video and Slide to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.

1016/j.sctalk.2023.100253.

Figures and tables

Science Talks 8 (2023) 100253

⁎Corresponding author.

E-mail address: jae.son@partner.kit.edu (J. Son).

Fig. 1. Ecosystem Services (Source: Own illustration).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sctalk.2023.100253

Received 8 February 2023; Received in revised form 3 May 2023; Accepted 8 June 2023

Available online xxxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Science Talks

journal homepage: www.elsevier.es/sctalk

Fig. 3. Variables and outcomes from willingness-to-pay (WTP) (Source: Own illustration).

Fig. 2. Cultural Ecosystem Services (Source: Own illustration).

J. Son, S. Saha Science Talks 8 (2023) 100253

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Jaewon Son:Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing –original draft,

Visualization. Somidh Saha: Validation,Writing –review &editing, Super-

vision.

Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

Acknowledgments

Funding: Jaewon Son was supported by the Research Grants - Doctoral

Programmes in Germany from German Academic Exchange Services

(DAAD) [57588370].

Declaration of interests

The authors declare that theyhave no known competing ﬁnancial inter-

ests or personal relationships that could have appeared to inﬂuence the

work reported in this paper.

Further reading

[1] Erik Andersson, Maria Tengö, Timon McPhearson, Peleg Kremer, Cultural ecosystem

services as a gateway for improving urban sustainability, Ecosyst. Services 12 (2015)

165–168.

[2] Terry C. Daniel, Andreas Muhar, Arne Arnberger, Olivier Aznar, James W. Boyd, Kai

M.A. Chan, Robert Costanza, et al., Contributions of cultural services to the ecosystem

services agenda, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 109 (23) (2012) 8812–8819.

[3] Roy Haines-Young,Marion Potschin,The links between biodiversity,ecosystem services

and human well-being, Ecosyst. Ecol. New Synthesis 1 (2010) 110–139.

[4] Erik Jorgensen, Towards an Urban Forestry Concept, Environment Canada, 1974.

[5] Imran Khan, Hongdou Lei, Gaffar Ali, Shahid Ali, Minjuan Zhao, Public attitudes, pref-

erences and willingness to pay for river ecosystem services, Int. J. Environ. Res. Public

Health 16 (19) (2019) 3707.

[6] Cecil C. Konijnendijk, Robert M. Ricard, Andy Kenney, Thomas B. Randrup, Deﬁning

urban forestry–a comparative perspective of North America and Europe, Urban For.

Urban Green. 4 (3–4) (2006) 93–103.

[7] Yanxu Liu, The willingness to pay for ecosystem servi ces on the Tibetan Plateau of

China, Geogr. Sustain. 1 (2) (2020) 141–151.

[8] Andra Ioana Milcu, Jan Hanspach, David Abson, Joern Fischer, Cultural ecosystem ser-

vices: a literature review and prospects for future research, Ecol. Soc. 18, no. 3 (2013).

[9] ElinorOstrom, A general framework for analyzingsustainability of social-ecological sys-

tems, Science 325 (5939) (2009) 419–422.

[10] Clara C. Pregitzer, Mark S. Ashton, Sarah Charlop-Powers, Anthony W. D’Amato, Brent

R. Frey, Bram Gunther, Richard A. Hallett, Kurt S. Pregitzer, Christopher W. Woodall,

Mark A. Bradford, Deﬁning and assessing urbanforests to inform management and pol-

icy, Environ. Res. Lett. 14 (8) (2019), 085002.

[11] Walter V. Reid, Har old A. Mooney, Angela Cr opper, Doris Capistran o, Stephen R.

Carpenter, Kanchan Chopr a, Partha Dasgupta, et al., Ecosystems and Human Well-

Being-Synthesis: A Report of the MillenniumEcosystem Assessment, Island Press,2005.

[12] Jose L. Rolando, CeciliaTurin, David A. Ramírez,Victor Mares, Jorge Monerris, Roberto

Quiroz, Key ecosystem services and ecological intensiﬁcation of agriculture in the trop-

ical high-Andean Puna as affected by land-use and climate changes, Agric. Ecosyst. En-

viron. 236 (2017) 221–233.

[13] James Salzman, Genevieve Bennett, Nathaniel Carroll, Allie Goldstein, Michael Jenkins,

The global status and trends of payments for ecosystem services, Nat. Sustain. 1 (3)

(2018) 136–144.

[14] Luca Tacconi, Redeﬁning payments for environmental services, Ecol. Econ. 73 (2012)

29–36.

[15] Masaharu Tsujimoto, Yuya Kajikawa, Junichi Tomita, Yoichi Matsumoto, A review of

the ecosystem concept—towards coherent ecosystem design, Technol. Forecast. Soc.

Chang. 136 (2018) 49–58.

Jaewon Son is a Ph.D. candidate in Geography at the Institute

for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karls-

ruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). She is a German Academic

Exchange Serv ice (DAAD) Doctoral Sc holarship holder and

was awarded a Green Talents Aw ard by the German Federal

Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for sustainability

research. She holds a master's degree in International Develop-

ment and Cooperation from Korea University.

Dr. SomidhSaha is a senior scientist and research group leader

at the Institute for Technology Assessmentand Systems Analysis

(ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). He searches for

solutionsto increase the social-ecological resilience of forests to

climate change impact through inter- and transdisciplinary ap-

proaches. He focuses on understanding the patterns and pro-

cesses behind the trade-offs between ecosystem services and

involving mul tiple stakeholders to co-create resilien t future

forests.

Fig. 4. Urban forest as a social-ecological system (Source: Own illustration).

J. Son, S. Saha Science Talks 8 (2023) 100253

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.

The willingness to pay for ecosystem services on the Tibetan Plateau of China

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