Mobile phone big data can offer new opportunities for identifying weather impacts on recreational ecosystem services in protected areas. This could be useful to assess how climate change could affect ...recreational ecosystem services. To explore these opportunities, we utilize mobile phone data and examine impacts of tropical weather (temperature, rainfall, and wind) and holidays on visitor numbers and stay time in an urban protected area in Singapore. These impacts were analyzed by visitors' home regions and ethnic groups as well. The study results showed that rising temperatures below 31.7 °C had positive impacts on visitor numbers, in contrast to the common perception that cooler temperatures would be always preferred for outdoor activities in a tropical region. Meanwhile, these rising temperatures reduced visitor stay time in the protected area. Rain and wind had limited impacts on visitors. Compared to the weather variables, holidays had bigger impacts on visitors, particularly the Chinese group and those visitors living not close to the protected area. The study results highlight several advantages of mobile phone data application to analyzing weather impacts on public use of urban protected areas.
Big data have the potential to improve nonmarket valuation, but their application has been scarce. To test this potential, we apply mobile phone data to the zonal travel cost method and measure ...recreational ecosystem services from Bukit Timah (representing an urban protected area) and Jurong Lake Gardens (an urban recreational park) in Singapore. The study results show that the annual recreational benefits of the recreational park (S$54,698,761 to S$66,805,454) outweighed the benefits of the protected area (S$6,947,974 to S$9,068,027). The count data structure reduced the flexibility of the mobile phone data application. Compared to survey data, however, mobile phone data could prevent random errors and visitor memory biases; monitor impacts of site quality changes over time; count visitors from multiple entrances; and be cost-efficient. Overall, these results highlight the potential of mobile phone data application to improve travel cost analysis.
•We apply mobile phone data to the zonal travel cost method in Singapore.•The study results revealed recreational benefits of urban parks and a protected area.•The count data structure limited the flexibility of the mobile phone data application.•Compared to surveys, however, these data still offer advantages for the travel cost method.
The metaverse could provide a new way of interacting with nature through immersive three-dimensional virtual worlds. This digital nature recreation has the potential to shape users' perceptions, ...knowledge, and behavior toward nature. Despite this potential, its user demand is currently unknown. This study analyzes the demand for digital forest recreation in the metaverse by conducting a discrete choice experiment with university students as potential metaverse users to fill this knowledge gap. The study results revealed that users preferred digital forest recreation to experience outdoor adventure and a nature-based digital twin in the metaverse, indicating that digital forest recreation has the potential to influence human-nature interactions. The students required responsible and immersive metaverse platforms for digital forest recreation that were not subject to invasions of user privacy (e.g., selling big data of users), biased algorithms (e.g., racism), algorithms selling virtual goods, cyberaggression (e.g., trolling), and less immersive virtual experiences. These findings highlight both opportunities and challenges for creating user-centered digital forest recreation in the metaverse. The research contributes to understanding potential interactions between technological, social, and ecological systems.
•This study examines the demand for digital forest recreation in the metaverse.•A discrete choice experiment was conducted with university students as potential users.•The students preferred outdoor adventure and interacting with a digital twin of nature.•However, they required responsible and immersive metaverse platforms.•These findings highlight potential opportunities and challenges for digital forest recreation.
Pandemic outbreaks can cause diverse impacts on society by altering human-nature relations. This study analyzed these relational changes during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Swine ...flu, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and Ebola outbreaks by applying machine learning and big data analyses of global news articles. The results showed that social-ecological systems play vital roles in analyzing indirect pandemic impacts. Herein, major pandemic impacts, including reduced use of cultural ecosystem services, can be analyzed by big data analyses at the global scale. All the identified pandemic impacts herein were linked to provisioning and cultural ecosystem services, implying that these ecosystem services might be more recognized or valued more by the public than regulating and supporting ecosystem services. Further, the pandemic impacts were presented with human-centric views, indicating a challenge to adapting nature-based solutions to mitigate the risk of future pandemic emergences. These findings will advance the current knowledge of diverse pandemic impacts and human-nature relations.
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•This study examines changes in human-nature relations during pandemic outbreaks.•Big data analysis was applied to global news related to SARS, Swine flu, MERS, and Ebola.•Big data analysis can support the analysis of pandemic impacts on cultural ecosystem services.•Regulating and supporting ecosystem services may be less recognized and valued by the public.•The media's human-centric views signal a challenge to adapt to nature-based solutions.
Many ecolabels support sustainable production and consumption related to ecosystem services and could be used as a basis to develop ecosystem services certification. To generate a price premium and ...attract buy-in from producers, such a certification would need to boost the brand equity of the certified product above the competition. This study tests the feasibility of such an effect by analyzing the brand equity of certified bottled water using a choice experiment with 529 households in Lombok, Indonesia. Our results revealed enhanced brand equity of certified bottles, indicating an impact of ecolabel logos used to represent certification. However, the enhancement neither exceeded brand equity of competing brands of bottled water, nor reflected different values associated with the ecolabel logos. These results imply challenges for certification uptake in a competitive market, a need for branding and marketing of certification, and the importance of brand-competitiveness analysis in price premium studies.
•Ecolabels might be expanded as ecosystem services certification.•Certification should competitively enhance brand equity to capture price premiums.•Certification delivered a low-level enhancement to brand equity of bottled water.•Consumers had low awareness of ecolabels and could not detect their different values.•Challenges exist for certification uptake and branding of certification is needed.
There are many studies indicating the linkages of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) forest management certification to forest ecosystem services (FES). The primary focus of the research was the FSC ...system's impacts on FES management. What is unique about this study is that it evaluates the adaptability of key FSC stakeholders in terms of their ability to incorporate FES. We surveyed 270 FSC stakeholders to quantify the capacity of FSC certification bodies (e.g., auditors) to audit FES delivery, the preferences of FSC enabling partners (e.g., FSC national networks) to provide training, and the experiences and expectations of FSC certificate holders (e.g., forest owners) to manage and sell FES. The study results indicate that the stakeholder adaptability was high for biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, and provision of non-timber forest products, medium for watershed protection services, and low for ecotourism and agricultural products. This may help FSC establish priorities for capacity development for FES.
•The key FSC stakeholders' adaptability was high for biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, and provision of non-timber forest products.•Stakeholder adaptability was medium for watershed protection services.•Stakeholder adaptability was low for ecotourism and agricultural products.
•This study examines the roles of social capital in climate change adaptation.•The social capital includes trust, community participation, and relations.•We analysed farmers facing high climate ...change risks in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.•Farmers with high social capital are willing to participate more in the adaptation process.
Climate change increases the vulnerability of agricultural sector due to the increasing threat from pest attacks. Mitigation of a threat that results from climate change requires adaptation strategies. This study investigates farmers’ willingness to participate in the process of climate change adaptation in Yogyakarta, Indonesia; particularly in facing the increasing risk of pest attacks. Using a logistic regression model, we tested the impacts of social capital on farmers’ willingness to participate. The results showed that 70% of farmers were willing to contribute financially to the adaptation process. This participation was positively correlated with high social capital, which consists of high level of trust, community engagement, and personal relations with people in other villages. This study contributes to the literature by highlighting the potential roles of social capital in the process of climate change adaptation in agricultural sector.
This study spatially estimated degraded lands in Indonesia that have limited functions for food production, carbon storage, and conservation of biodiversity and native vegetation and examined their ...suitability to grow biodiesel species (Calophyllum inophyllum, Pongamia pinnata, and Reutealis trisperma) and biomass species (Calliandra calothyrsus and Gliricidia sepium). Results showed ~3.5 million ha of degraded lands potentially suitable for these species in Indonesia. With the all-five-species scenario, these lands had the potential to produce 1105 PJ year−1 of biomass and 3 PJ year−1 of biodiesel. With the biodiesel-only-species scenario, these lands showed the potential to produce 10 PJ year−1 of biodiesel. Despite this energy potential, however, the land sizes were too small to support economies of scale for biofuel production. The study findings contribute to identifying lands with limited functions, modeling the growth of biofuel species on regional lands, and estimating carbon stocks of restored degraded lands in Indonesia.
Bioenergy production from degraded land provides an opportunity to secure a new renewable energy source to meet the rapid growth of energy demand in Indonesia while turning degraded land into ...productive landscape. However, bioenergy production would not be feasible without landowner participation. This study investigates factors affecting landowners’ preferences for bioenergy production by analyzing 150 landowners with fire experience in Buntoi village in Central Kalimantan using Firth’s logistic regression model. Results indicated that 76% of landowners preferred well-known species that have a readily available market such as sengon (Albizia chinensis (Osb.) Merr.) and rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis Müll.Arg.) for restoration on degraded land. Only 8% of preferred nyamplung (Calophyllum inophyllum L.) for bioenergy production; these particular landowners revealed a capacity to handle the uncertainty of the bioenergy market because they had additional jobs and income, had migrated from Java where nyamplung is prevalent, and preferred agricultural extension to improve their technical capacity. These results contribute to identifying key conditions for a bottom-up approach to bioenergy production from degraded land in Indonesia: a stable bioenergy market for landowners, application of familiar bioenergy species, and agricultural extension support for capacity building.
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