The attitute of European people towards urban greenspaces - Our new paper in Conservation Letters

Greenspaces, such as urban parks are important part of our everyday life. Especially in this spring, when most of us are spending the days in home office, we often miss our favorite urban park and appreciate even more nature that surrounds us in the city.

People's attitude towards urban greenspaces is in the focus of our recent paper, published in Conservation Letters.

The citation of the paper is:

Fischer, L.K., Neuenkamp L., Lampinen, J., Tuomi, M., Alday, J.G., Cancellieri, L., Casado-Arzuaga, I., Čeplová, N., Cerveró, L., Deák, B., Eriksson, O., Fellowes, M.D.E., Fernández De Manuel, B., Filibeck, G., González-Guzmán, A., Hinojosa, M.B., Kowarik, I., Lampei Bucharová, A., Lumbierres, B., Pons, X., Rodríguez-García, E., Schröder, R., Sperandii, M.G., Unterweger, P., Valkó, O., Vázquez, V., Klaus, V.H. (2020): Public attitudes toward biodiversity‐friendly greenspace management in Europe. Conservation Letters e12718. doi: 10.1111/conl.12718. [IF2018: 7.397]

You can access the paper here.

The idea of the main authors, was to perform a European-scale inventory on people's attitude towards urban greenspaces. Special thanks to Leonie Fisher, Lena Neuenkamp and Valentin Klaus for coordinating the whole project, we are very happy that we could take part.

Nature in the city - greenspaces are essential for human well-being.

During the study, we conducted interviews with more than 2000 people in 19 cities across Europe. We used questionnaires with photographic stimuli to assess the attitude of urban residents towards the biodiversity-friendly management of urban greenspaces. The questionnaire was designed to assess the preference of people towards two different types of urban grasslands: tidy short-cut lawns versus biodiverse but ’chaotic’ tallgrass meadows. There were questions about how often and why do the respondents use urban greenspaces, and how should urban grasslands look like in their opinion. We also asked people whether they are aware about the concept of biodiversity, and whether they consider biodiversity conservation as a societal responsibility. Finally we proposed a hypothetical scenario to the respondents: if 50% of the city’s lawns would be converted into biodiversity-friendly tall-grass meadows, would they agree with this procedure?

We found that people who perform a higher number of activities in greenspaces, and those familiar with the term biodiversity and more responsible towards biodiversity conservation showed higher preference for tall-grass meadows. Contrary, people that were concerned about health risks from tall-grass were more positive about tidy greenspaces.

Urban park in Münster, Germany - near the place where Valentin Klaus developed the questionnaire survey. Tall-grass meadow and short-cut lawn. Which one do you prefer?

Abstract

Increasing urbanization worldwide calls for more sustainable urban development. Simultaneously, the global biodiversity crisis accentuates the need of fostering biodiversity within cities. Policies supporting urban nature conservation need to understand people’s acceptance of biodiversity-friendly greenspace management. We surveyed more than 2000 people in 19 European cities about their attitudes towards near-natural urban grassland management in public greenspaces, and related their responses to nine sociocultural parameters. Results reveal that people across Europe can support urban biodiversity, yet within the frames of a generally tidy appearance of public greenery. Younger people and those using greenspaces for a greater variety of activities were more likely to favor biodiversity-friendly greenspace management. Additionally, people who were aware of the meaning of biodiversity and those stating responsibility for biodiversity conservation particularly supported biodiversity-friendly greenspace management. Our results point at explicit measures like environmental education to increase public acceptance of policies that facilitate nature conservation within cities.