Recently an international debate has been developed about changes affecting ecosystems and about possible future scenarios. Researchers and environmental experts introduced the topic of ecosystem services and promoted studies aimed to evalute them. Ecosystem services include agroecosystems, forest ecosystems, grassland ecosystems, aquatic ecosystems; they are categorised in provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services.
Recent literature has focused on objective measurement of ecological and economic values of ecosystem services, while only few studies have regarded individual subjective assessment of their socio-cultural values. In fact, natural environment can contribute to enhance human wellbeing and individual satisfaction for quality of life. Thus, it can be useful to measure whether and how people are feeling benefits deriving from socio-cultural values of ecosystem services. It is likely that individual assessment can vary according to social and demographical characteristics. Then, different social groups could perceive and assess ecosystem services differently each other.
The goal of the research is twofold. We aim to propose some methods to measure socio-cultural values of ecosystem services based on individual subjective opinions. We take into account sources of individual and social heterogeneity. The other important goal is to study the dependence of socio-cultural values on the social heterogeneity.
A systematic literature review on the socio-cultural values will be carried out, focusing on studies investigating variables influencing individual assessment. We will study the statistical methodology on the measurement and treatment of individual subjective opinions. Then, we will propose some methods that will be applied to some case studies, discussing advantages and limitations and comparing them with current methods. We will apply appropriate statistical methodologies to study how socio-cultural values depend on social heterogeneity.
Environmental social values arise from interactions and relationships between people and environment. Nature value orientations are part of values that originates in the minds of individuals and groups as their changing perceptions and human needs interact with the environmental, political, and economic systems (Kennedy et al., 1995). Therefore, understanding the ways society benefits from nature and the many reasons that societies value ecosystem services is necessary (Menzel & Teng, 2010). Recent contributions in ecosystem services research have stressed the need to advance the understanding of the social-cultural values of ecosystem services. Central focus of the socio-cultural perspective is the human being with its social and psychological context, non-materialistic needs, understanding of wellbeing, and the rational as well as the emotional components of its attitudes towards the natural environment (Chiesura & De Groot, 2003). This research wants to increase the understanding of the socio-cultural assessment by empirically demonstrating that different stakeholders and beneficiaries hold different values toward ecosystem services, depending also from some social characteristics.
References
Boyd, J., & Banzhaf, S. (2007). What are ecosystem services? The need for standardized environmental accounting units. Ecological Economics, 63(2¿3), 616¿626
Brown, T. C., Bergstrom, J. C., & Loomis, J. B. (2007). Defining, valuing and providing ecosystem goods and services. Natural Resources Journal, 47, 329¿376
Cáceres, D. M., Tapella, E., Quetier, F., Diaz, S., Cáceres, D. M., Tapella, E., Díaz, S. (2015). The social value of biodiversity and ecosystem services from the perspectives of different social actors. Ecology and Society, 20(1), 62
Casacci, S., Pareto, A. (2015). La costruzione di indicatori soggettivi mediante indici di dissomiglianza: un¿applicazione all¿indagine sugli aspetti della vita quotidiana. Paper presented at the Istat meeting Qualità della vita in Italia: venti anni di studi attraverso l'indagine Multiscopo dell'Istat. http://www.istat.it/it/archivio/145432
Chiesura, A., & De Groot, R. (2003). Critical natural capital: A socio-cultural perspective. Ecological Economics, 44(2¿3), 219¿231.
Costanza, R., D¿Arge, R., Groot, R., Farber, S., Grasso, M., Hannon, B., van den Belt, M. (1997). The value of the world¿s ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature, 387, 253¿260
Costanza, Robert, de Groot, R., Sutton, P., van der Ploeg, S., Anderson, S. J., Kubiszewski, I., Turner, R. K. (2014). Changes in the global value of ecosystem services. Global Environmental Change, 26(1), 152¿158
Daily, G. C., Polasky, S., Goldstein, J., Kareiva, P. M., Mooney, H. A., Pejchar, L., Shallenberger, R. (2009). Ecosystem services in decision making: Time to deliver. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 7(1), 21¿28
Fattore, M., Maggino, F., Arcagni, A. (2015). Exploiting ordinal data for subjective well-being evaluation. Statistics in Transition, 16, 409-428
Gómez-Baggethun, E., Martín-López, B., Barton, D., Braat, L., Saarikoski, H., Kelemen, E., Harrison, P. (2014). State-of-the-art report on integrated valuation of ecosystem services. European Commission FP7, (July), 33
Guagnano, G., Sebastiani, M.R. (2018). Away from dissatisfaction, closer to well-being: a multidimensional synthetic measure. Social indicators research, 3, 977-997
Kennedy, J. J., Fox, B. L., & Osen, T. D. (1995). Changing Social Values and Images of Public Rangeland Management. Rangelands, 17(4), 127¿132
Kenter, J. O., O¿Brien, L., Hockley, N., Ravenscroft, N., Fazey, I., Irvine, K. N., Williams, S. (2015). What are shared and social values of ecosystems? Ecological Economics, 111, 86¿99
Martín-López, B., Iniesta-Arandia, I., García-Llorente, M., Palomo, I., Casado-Arzuaga, I., Del Amo, D. G., Montes, C. (2012). Uncovering ecosystem service bundles through social preferences. PLoS ONE, 7(6)
Menzel, S., & Teng, J. (2010). Ecosystem services as a stakeholder-driven concept for conservation science. Conservation Biology, 24(3), 907¿909
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. (2003). MA Conceptual Framework. Current State & Trends Assessment, 25¿36
OECD, (2008). Handbook on Constructing Composite Indicators, available at http://www.oecd.org/std/42495745.pdf
Oteros-Rozas, E., Martín-López, B., González, J. A., Plieninger, T., López, C. A., & Montes, C. (2014). Socio-cultural valuation of ecosystem services in a transhumance social-ecological network. Regional Environmental Change, 14(4), 1269¿1289
Scholte, S. S. K., van Teeffelen, A. J. A., & Verburg, P. H. (2015). Integrating socio-cultural perspectives into ecosystem service valuation: A review of concepts and methods. Ecological Economics, 114, 67¿78.
van Riper, C. J., Kyle, G. T., Sutton, S. G., Barnes, M., & Sherrouse, B.C. (2012). Mapping outdoor recreationists¿ perceived social values for ecosystem services at Hinchinbrook Island National Park, Australia. Applied Geography, 35(1¿2), 164¿173