•There are several potential winners in the process of biotic homogenization (BH).•We show that non-native bird species outcompete native ones in the BH.•In Israel, common native birds have been ...declining in the last 15 years.•In contrast, there were 250 %–800 % increases in non-native populations.•In particular, common mynas appear to drive declines of house sparrows.
Species are declining worldwide, but while some are becoming threatened, few others thrive under novel environmental conditions. Land use changes and biological invasion are the main drivers of this ‘biotic homogenization’ (BH) that increasingly occurs in human-dominated landscapes. Among birds, several groups of species have been identified as ‘winners’ in this process (e.g. invasive and native urban specialists and generalist species). Yet, as populations continue to grow, competition can appear between those groups and it is not yet clear who are the primary ‘winners’ in the BH process. Here, we analyze trends of common native and non-native birds during the last 15 years across Israel, where large populations of very destructive invasive alien bird species were introduced towards the end of the previous century, using a nation-wide citizen-science program, and two local standardized surveys. Community and population analyses showed that the non-native species are the primary ‘winners’ of the BH process. Native urban specialists and generalist species that were previously considered as ‘winners’ are now among the ‘losers’. For instance, populations of the invasive common myna increased dramatically, while populations of the previously widespread house sparrow strongly decreased. Previous studies conducted in Israel have shed light on the mechanisms through which invasive bird species can impact native species, notably competition. We show that these processes are among the key factors that drive population declines and changes in bird communities. This highlights the importance of acting now, especially since non-native species are currently spreading from human-dominated areas to more natural environments.
Urbanization and urban lifestyle are progressively diminishing individuals' opportunity (e.g., nature exposure) to experience and orientation (affinity) towards nature, ultimately reducing people's ...experiences of nature. This process has been described as the ‘extinction of experience’ (EoE), and it was suggested that it can alter the way people benefit from, interact with, learn about, emotionally connect with and commit to protect the natural world. The EoE is underpinned by interconnected relations between the drivers, nature experiences and outcomes, yet to date most research have focused on bilateral relations (e.g. between opportunity and well-being). Here we adopt a holistic approach to jointly explore the network of relationships suggested by the EoE theory. We conducted a survey of 523 inhabitants of a large metropolis, Tel Aviv, Israel, living in neighborhoods varying in nature intensity levels, and explored their orientation, health, well-being, environmental attitudes and conservation behaviors. Using a structural equation model, we empirically demonstrated the validity of the theoretical model of the EoE, but also showed more complex relationships. For instance, opportunity to experience urban nature was only related to health and well-being benefits, while orientation towards nature was related to well-being, conservation attitudes and behaviors in different contexts. Thus, providing opportunities to experience nature seems to be less sufficient than strengthening people's orientation to avert the EoE, as the latter can simultaneously enhance nature experiences, conservation behaviors and provide social benefits. This knowledge is pivotal if we are to promote policies that achieve the behavioral changes needed to mitigate the biodiversity crisis.
•We empirically tested the validity of the extinction of experience framework.•We provided support for the framework but also showed complex relationships.•Providing more opportunities can help maintain health and well-being in cities.•Connecting people with nature can benefit both people and, indirectly, biodiversity.•Enhancing the quality of nature interactions can help increase nature affinity.
The increasing alienation of people from nature is profoundly concerning because people's interactions with nature affect well‐being, affinity for nature, and support of biodiversity conservation. ...Efforts to restore or enhance people's interactions with nature are, therefore, important to ensure sustainable human and wildlife communities, but little is known about how this can be achieved. A key factor that shapes the way people interact with nature is their affinity for nature (often measured as nature relatedness NR). We explored how using cues to experience nature as a means to induce NR situationally can influence the quality of people's nature interactions on visits to green spaces and their positive affect after the visit. Cues to experience are cues that guide individuals on how to interact with nature. We surveyed 1023 visitors to a nature reserve to examine the relationships between trait (i.e., stable and long‐lasting) and state (i.e., temporary, brief) NR, the quality of nature interactions, and positive affect. We also conducted a controlled experiment in which 303 participants spent 30 min outdoors on campus and reported the quality of their nature interactions and positive affect. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 9 cues‐to‐experience experimental groups (e.g., smell flowers, observe wildlife, turn off your phone) that differed in the psychological distance from nature that they prompted. Participants who received cues of close psychological distance from nature (e.g., smell and touch natural elements) interacted 3 to 4 times more with nature and reported 0.2 more positive affect than other participants. Our results demonstrate that providing cues to experience nature, which bring people closer to nature and potentially induce state NR, can enhance the quality of people's nature interactions and their positive affect. These results highlight the role of NR in high‐quality nature interactions and suggest the use of cues to experience as a promising avenue for inducing state NR and promoting meaningful interactions with biodiversity, thus, reconciling conservation and well‐being objectives.
Fomento a las Interacciones Significativas y Positivas con la Naturaleza para los Visitantes a las Áreas Verdes
Resumen
El creciente distanciamiento entre las personas y la naturaleza genera una preocupación seria, pues las interacciones entre las personas y la naturaleza afectan al bienestar, la afinidad por la naturaleza y al apoyo para la conservación de la biodiversidad. Por lo tanto, los esfuerzos por restaurar o mejorar las interacciones entre las personas y la naturaleza son importantes para asegurar la existencia de comunidades sustentables de humanos y fauna. A pesar de esto, se conoce muy poco sobre cómo se puede lograr lo anterior. Un factor clave que define la manera en la que las personas interactúan con la naturaleza es su afinidad por la misma (la cual se mide generalmente como vínculo con la naturaleza VN). Exploramos cómo el uso de las pautas para experimentar la naturaleza como los medios para inducir el VN circunstancial puede influir sobre la calidad de las interacciones entre las personas y la naturaleza durante sus visitas a áreas verdes y el efecto positivo posterior a estas visitas. Las pautas experimentales son pautas que guían a los individuos sobre cómo deben interactuar con la naturaleza. Encuestamos a 1023 visitantes en una reserva natural para examinar las relaciones entre el rasgo (es decir, estable y de larga duración) y el estado (es decir, temporal, breve) del VN, la calidad de las interacciones con la naturaleza y el efecto positivo. También realizamos un experimento controlado en el cual 303 participantes pasaron 30 minutos en el exterior y reportaron la calidad de sus interacciones con la naturaleza y del efecto positivo. Los participantes fueron asignados al azar a uno de los nueve grupos de pautas experimentales (p. ej.: oler flores, observar fauna, apagar su teléfono celular) cuya diferencia era el distanciamiento psicológico con la naturaleza que pautaba. Los participantes que recibieron pautas de distancia psicológica próxima a la naturaleza (p. ej.: oler y tocar elementos naturales) interactuaron 3–4 veces más con la naturaleza y reportaron un efecto 0.2 más positivo que los demás participantes. Nuestros resultados demuestran que el fomento de pautas para experiencias con la naturaleza, las cuales acercan a las personas con la naturaleza y tienen el potencial para inducir un estado VN, pueden mejorar la calidad de las interacciones que tienen las personas con la naturaleza y su efecto positivo. Estos resultados resaltan el papel del VN en las interacciones de alta calidad con la naturaleza y sugieren que el uso de pautas exerimentale es una vía prometedora para inducir el estado VN y promover las interacciones significativas con la biodiversidad, reconciliando así a la conservación con los objetivos de bienestar.
摘要
人类对自然日益疏远的现象令人深感忧虑, 因为人类与自然的互动影响着人类的福祉、对自然的亲近以及对生物多样性保护的支持。因此, 努力恢复或加强人类与自然互动对确保人类和野生动物群落的可持续发展至关重要。然而, 人们对如何实现这一目标仍知之甚少。塑造人与自然互作方式的一个关键因素是人们对自然的亲近感 (通常用自然联结来衡量) 。本研究探索了引导式自然体验作为在情境中激发自然联结的方法, 是如何影响人们游览绿地时与自然互动的质量以及游览后的积极作用的。引导式体验可以指引人们如何与自然互动。我们调查了一个自然保护区的 1023 名游客, 以研究特质自然联结 (稳定性和持久性) 与状态自然联结 (暂时性和短暂性) 、与自然互作的质量和积极影响之间的关系。我们还进行了一项控制实验, 要求 303 名参与者在校园的户外待 30 分钟, 并报告他们与自然互动质量和积极影响。参与者被随机分配到引导式自然体验 (如闻花香、观察野生动物、关掉手机) 的九个实验小组中的一个, 这些实验小组激发人与自然不同的心理距离。受到与自然有密切心理距离引导 (如嗅闻和触摸自然元素) 的参与者与自然的互动比其他参与者多 3‐4 倍, 他们报告的积极影响也比其他参与者多 0.2 倍。我们的研究结果表明, 在自然体验中提供使人们更接近自然并潜在地诱发状态自然联结的引导, 可以提高人们的自然互作质量和受到的积极影响。以上结果强调了自然联结在高质量自然互作中的作用, 并提出引导式自然体验作为一种激发状态自然联结, 促进与生物多样性有意义的互动, 从而协调保护和人类福祉目标的方法, 具有很好的前景。【翻译: 胡怡思; 审校: 聂永刚】
Article Impact Statement: Bringing people closer to nature can lead to meaningful nature interactions and increase positive affect.
•Enhancing experiences of nature (EoN) is vital to achieve conservation agenda.•Pet dogs encourage people to go outdoors more often.•EoN and its outcomes for conservation significantly vary across ...countries.•Owning dogs influence EoN and relatedness to nature but not environmental attitudes.•Enhancing both quantity and quality of EoN is crucial to achieve conservation goals.
Urbanization threatens biodiversity and people’s opportunities to interact with nature. This progressive disconnection from the natural world is profoundly concerning as it affects human health, wellbeing, attitudes and behaviors towards nature. Increasing the quantity of experiences of nature (EoN) can enhance health and wellbeing benefits, but it remains unclear whether it can also affect environmental attitudes across different countries. Here, we conducted a cross-cultural survey among 741 people from France, Israel and the UK, who either own a dog (and thus prone to go outdoors to walk their dog), a cat, or no pet. This setting was used as a quasi-experiment to explore the relationships between EoN, nature relatedness, environmental knowledge and attitudes. Our results confirmed that dog-owners have a higher quantity of EoN. However, we found that although dog-ownership was associated with people’s relatedness to nature, the increased quantity of EoN did not correlate with environmental knowledge or attitudes. Thus, increasing the quantity of EoN may not be sufficient for mitigating the effects of the extinction of experience and consequently a more profound understanding of the quality of EoN and the means to enhance it are needed. This knowledge is crucial to help landscape planners provide accessible and suitably designed green spaces that can foster meaningful interactions with nature, for instance through specific gardening practices or creative design.
A good deal of research has recently focused on people's commitment to biodiversity conservation by investigating their “willingness-to-pay” (WTP). Because of the public's self-reported preferences ...for species that are more charismatic or similar to humans, conservation programs are often biased toward these species. Our study aimed to explore the determinants of WTP among 10066 participants in a zoo conservation program. The program aims to raise money to support conservation programs and involves donating a sum of money to “adopt” an animal in the zoo. We explored whether participants were influenced by particular scientific characteristics of the animal (IUCN conservation status and phylogenetic distance from humans) or by more affect-related characteristics, such as the charisma of the animal. We found that participants did not choose an animal to adopt because of the endangered status of the species, and did not donate more to endangered species than to other species. Instead, they were more likely to choose a charismatic species. However, surprisingly, those who chose a less charismatic species gave more money on average to the program than those who adopted more charismatic species, suggesting a higher level of commitment among the former. These results therefore suggest that this type of conservation program may not be an effective way of reconnecting people with conservation issues related to endangered species. We therefore advise zoos to communicate more strongly on the level of threat to species and to increase the ratio of endangered over charismatic species in their animal adoption programs.
•People did not donate more to the more endangered species in a conservation program.•Charismatic species were more likely to be chosen.•Monetary donations per person were on average higher for less charismatic species.•Participants donated more money to species that are more similar to humans.
Urbanization deletes and degrades natural ecosystems, threatens biodiversity, and alienates people from the experience of nature. Nature-based solutions (NbS) that are inspired and supported by ...nature have the potential to deliver multifunctional environmental and social benefits to address these challenges in urban areas under context-specific conditions. NbS implementation often relies on a one-size-fits-all approach, although interventions that maximize one benefit (e.g., biodiversity conservation) may have no influence on, or even negatively affect, others (e.g., social justice). Furthermore, the current pathways from NbS to various benefits do not rely on a deep understanding of the underlying processes, prohibiting the identification of optimal solutions that maximize synergies across pathways. We present a comprehensive socio-ecological framework that addresses these issues by recognizing that cities are human-dominated environments that are foremost built and maintained to support humans. Our framework demonstrates how we can use experiments and niche species models to understand and predict where species will be and where people will be healthy and happy in a comparable manner. This knowledge can then be integrated into decision support tools that use optimization algorithms to understand trade-offs, identify synergies, and provide planners with the tools needed to tailor context-specific NbS to yield greener, more resilient cities with happier people and reduced inequality.
Nature provides a myriad of intangible and non-material services to people. However, urbanites are increasingly disconnected from the natural world. The consequences of this progressive disconnection ...from nature remain difficult to measure as this process is slow and long-term monitoring or large-scale manipulation on nature experiences are scarce. Measures to contain the spread of the recent COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., lockdowns) have potentially reduced or even suppressed nature experiences in cities. This situation provided an opportunity for conducting a longitudinal study that can serve as a sort of natural experiment to quantify the effects of nature deprivation on individuals' health, well-being and relationship to nature. We collected data on these variables from the same individuals inhabiting a large metropolis (Tel Aviv, Israel) twice, in 2018 (before) and during the lockdown in 2020. Our results confirmed that frequency, duration and quality of nature interactions dropped during the lockdown, while environmental attitudes and affinity towards nature remained similar. This was particularly true for people living in the least green neighborhoods, where a significant decrease in personal and social well-being was also found. Finally, affinity towards nature influenced well-being through nature experiences in 2018. The mediation effect was not significant in 2020, probably due to the decrease in nature experiences during the lockdown, but the direct relationship between affinity towards nature and well-being remained strong. These results provide insights into the means required to align the public health and conservation agendas to safeguard urbanites' health and well-being during a pandemic and mitigate the biodiversity crisis.
•We used COVID-19 restriction measures to quantify effects of nature deprivation.•We surveyed the same individuals before the pandemic and during the lockdown.•Experiences of nature dropped for all respondents.•Well-being decreased only for people living in the least green neighborhoods.•Affinity towards nature and environmental attitudes remained unchanged.
Human cooperative behaviour, as assayed by decisions in experimental economic dilemmas such as the Dictator Game, is variable across human populations. Within-population variation has been less well ...studied, especially within industrial societies. Moreover, little is known about the extent to which community-level variation in Dictator Game behaviour relates to community-level variation in real-world social behaviour. We chose two neighbourhoods of the city of Newcastle upon Tyne that were similar in most regards, but at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of level of socioeconomic deprivation. We administered Dictator Games to randomly-selected residents, and also gathered a large number of more naturalistic measures of cooperativeness. There were dramatic differences in Dictator Game behaviour between the two neighbourhoods, with the mean allocation to the other player close to half the stake in the affluent neighbourhood, and close to one tenth of the stake in the deprived neighbourhood. Moreover, the deprived neighbourhood was also characterised by lower self-reported social capital, higher frequencies of crime and antisocial behaviour, a higher frequency of littering, and less willingness to take part in a survey or return a lost letter. On the other hand, there were no differences between the neighbourhoods in terms of the probability of helping a person who dropped an object, needed directions to a hospital, or needed to make change for a coin, and people on the streets were less likely to be alone in the deprived neighbourhood than the affluent one. We conclude that there can be dramatic local differences in cooperative behaviour within the same city, and that these need further theoretical explanation.
Urbanization and urban lifestyles increasingly disconnect people from nature in a process that was termed the ‘extinction of experience’. This loss of human–nature interactions can undermine both ...cognitive (ecological knowledge) and affective (emotional connection to nature) relations to nature, further impacting capabilities to experience, care for, benefit from and act to protect nature. Yet, the extent to which the urban life influences both cognitive and affective relations to nature, remains poorly understood and research is confined to a few countries and cultures.
We explored how cognitive and affective relations to nature can be related to people's childhood and current place of residency. We expected that urban dwellers, who have less opportunities to experience nature than their rural counterparts, will be less connected to nature and will demonstrate lower ecological knowledge than their rural counterparts.
We conducted four surveys in Israel, in urban and rural settings between 2015 and 2018 (N = 1706) to measure and compare (urban vs. rural) the following variables: (a) species identification skills (correctly identified); (b) familiarity (recognized), as two measures of cognitive relation with nature and (c) nature relatedness, as a measure of emotional connection to nature.
The ability to identify common plant, bird and butterfly species was poor in general (Av. = 3.83 out of 12), and lower for urban dwellers (Av. = 2.48) compared to their rural counterparts (Av. = 6.56). Differences in correct species identifications between urban and rural dwellers varied with taxa and peaked for butterflies (only 26 respondents managed to identify one species or more). We also identified an important gap between familiarity and species identification skills, especially for urban residents. Finally, people who currently live or used to live in rural areas during their childhood had higher scores of nature relatedness than their urban counterparts.
Our results highlight that decreased opportunity to interact with nature reduces cognitive and affective relations to nature. Such reductions can affect the overall preferences for human–nature relationships and exacerbate a pervasive negative cycle that modifies relational values such as, care for nature, sense of belonging, place and identity that influence both humans well‐being and environmental stewardship.
A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
Protected areas (PAs) are key conservation areas designed to limit the impacts of human activities on biodiversity. PAs also provide great opportunities for individuals to experience nature ...complexity, through recreational activities, and can contribute to restore the non-material and intangible services nature provides to people (i.e., cultural ecosystem services). However, recreational activities may negatively affect biodiversity. Identifying the right balance between promoting nature interactions and safeguarding biodiversity in PAs is challenging. Current knowledge gaps on the social value and ecological impacts of recreational activities, such as camping in PAs, hinder our ability to address this challenge. This is particularly true for PAs located in desert ecosystems. In this interdisciplinary study, we surveyed biodiversity and people to assess ecological impacts and social values of campsites in desert PAs in Israel. Ecological surveys included birds, plants, rodents and scorpions in campsites and control plots. We conducted two social surveys: (1) in situ survey of campsite users (N = 280) on satisfaction, motivations and perceptions of campsites and (2) online nation-wide survey (N = 322) on perceptions of campsites and investigation of the attributes individuals prioritize in campsites. Our results demonstrate that when desert campsites are located outside nature-rich areas (i.e. the wadis), they have relatively moderate negative impact on biodiversity for three out of the four taxa studied (birds, scorpions and rodents). Bird communities were dominated by synanthropic species in high intensity campsites. Surprisingly, even when campsites were located in nature-poor areas, users' satisfaction was relatively high. Among the broader population, ecological quality (i.e. vegetation complexity) did not have strong influence on people's preferences of/for campsites, and comfort-related aspects were prioritized over vegetation in campsites. Overall, our results demonstrate that placing desert campsites outside ecologically rich areas can serve as optimal solution to balance impacts on biodiversity and social value of recreation activities in PAs.
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•Balancing social and ecological aspects of recreational activities is vital in PAs.•We assessed both ecological impacts and social value of desert campsites in PAs.•There is a relatively moderate ecological impact on three out of four studied taxa.•Users' satisfaction was high, despite poor ecological quality of campsites.•Individuals seek nature but also comfort (e.g., bathroom) in desert campsites.
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