Public Valuation of Multifunctional Botanical Garden Attributes

Botanical gardens are multifunctional institutions that perform a wide range of functions using limited resources. Their social significance has grown alongside global challenges like biodiversity loss, the climate crisis, and food security, as well as the need to train future professionals. This study analyzes public preferences for the diverse functions of botanical gardens to inform sustainable management strategies, using the Sejong National Arboretum in South Korea as a case study. We identified seven attributes, including five traditional functions (collection, conservation, research, exhibition, and education) and two extended functions (healing and networking) that reflect the contemporary roles of botanical gardens. We conducted a discrete choice experiment in 2024 with 1200 respondents to assess preferences and marginal willingness to pay. Respondents showed the strongest preferences for research commercialization and global conservation, followed by urban outreach in healing. In contrast, we observed negative marginal willingness to pay values for exhibition, professional certification, national networking, and nationwide outreach in healing. Our findings indicate that the public interest in botanical garden activities extends beyond visitor-oriented functions to include conservation, research commercialization, and locally embedded healing services. These results offer an empirical basis for resource allocation and sustainable management strategies in botanical gardens.