Spatial scales and urban greenspace types influence public conservation preferences

There are increasing concerns for urban greenspaces as critical sources for biodiversity. Urban greenspaces provide various ecosystem services essential for urban residents. The emergent task is to incorporate public opinion for implementing urban landscape management by increasing their preference for conservation of urban greenspaces. However, there is little available information about public conservation preferences. Here, we examined the public preference for conservation of urban greenspaces and their determinants through an online questionnaire using photographs taken across two spatial scales (landscape and community) and two greenspace types (satoyamas and urban parks). Participants were asked about their conservation preferences (measured by the extent of willingness to pay) in response to the photographs of grassland habitats under different management conditions across satoyamas and urban park sites. We showed that the public are willing to pay more for managed satoyama sites (on average 447.0 JPY) than abandoned ones (395.5 JPY) at landscape scales. Managed satoyama sites included more species richness than abandoned ones. However, conservation preference for satoyama sites was deemed scale-dependent since it remained unaffected by management conditions at community scales. We thus suggest the importance of conserving the satoyama landscapes as per public requirement. In urban parks, independent of spatial scales, we found greater conservation preference for intensively-managed lawns (on average 478.6 and 426.0 JPY at landscape and community scales, respectively) than moderately-managed meadows (447.5 and 380.7 JPY). Urban lawns had less species richness than meadows, suggesting that public conservation preference for urban greenspaces is not necessarily built on biodiversity conservation. Furthermore, participants with more ecological knowledge, richer natural experiences in their childhood, and a higher frequency of greenspace visits were more willing to pay for conservation of both satoyamas and urban park sites independent of spatial scales. Thus, public conservation preferences for urban greenspaces depend on spatial scales considered and greenspace types. We provided some realistic data to prove that the Japanese people are willing to pay for the conservation of satoyamas and urban park greenspaces. Environmental education efforts and ensuring nature experiences could prove to be crucial measures to increase the public acceptance of the societal costs for biodiversity conservation.