Values held by Swedish primary school students towards forest ecosystems and the relevance for a nature’s contributions to people approach

Sean Goodwin, Sara Brogaard, Torsten Krause

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

How the concept of value is defined within ecosystem services operates as a filter through which important ecosystem features are identified by the specific benefits they provide to society and individuals. This value narrative reflects intrinsic and instrumental concepts which have been challenged by the Nature’s Contributions to People approach in additionally highlighting the importance of relational values, stemming from socio-cultural and ethical dimensions of human relationships with nature and ecosystems. Perceived as important for the interface between ecosystems and society, relational values are yet to be operationalised in ecosystem assessment processes. This study addresses how this can be done by using a mixed-method approach encompassing quantitative and qualitative data and methodologies. Our study focuses on how school children aged 10–12 years in Sweden (n = 403) value forest ecosystem services, and further hints at the contextual factors that mediate their value perception. Children are an important demographic for reasons of intergenerational equity, and because of the temporal inertia of intensively managed forest ecosystems in Sweden. Our results show that students display complex notions of value encompassing intrinsic, instrumental and relational values alike, highlighting the importance of a broader discussion on the valuation of ecosystems through mixed methods approaches.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)331-346
JournalEcosystems and People
Volume15
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 17 Nov 2019

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council [2016-00583];European Union Horizon 2020 - InnoForEst Project [763899]. We would like to express our deep gratitude to Christa Törn-Lindhe at Universeum in Gothenburg for her support in data collection and her energy in driving the ‘Love The Forest’ initiative. We are grateful to the school students who took part in the survey and the teachers who allowed us to come and visit their schools and carry out the workshops with their students. Furthermore, we would like to thank Astrid van Teffeleen and Klara Winkler for comments on earlier versions of this paper.

FundersFunder number
European Union Horizon 2020 - InnoForEst Project
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme763899
Vetenskapsrådet2016-00583

    Keywords

    • Sweden
    • School children
    • forest ecosystem services
    • values
    • education

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