The components of nature that provide wellbeing: Does biodiversity matters and for who?

Species extinctions are continuing at alarming rates, despite considerable efforts on the part of conservationists. Human action is responsible for the biodiversity crisis, and the solutions to it largely depend on the way people interact with nature in the future. However, the same processes that threat biodiversity, such as urbanization, also increasingly separate the majority of the world’s population from the experience of nature. This extinction of experience is profoundly concerning, as it affects the way people value and benefit from nature1. Conserving biodiversity in cities has been proposed as a win-win solution to jointly achieve ecological objectives and avert this extinction of experience. But to date, knowledge about the role that biodiversity plays in providing wellbeing benefits remains scarce, inconsistent and biased toward Anglo-Saxon culture2. Here, we explored the relationship between biodiversity and the subjective well-being of visitors of public gardens in Israel. During spring 2015, we sampled the diversity of birds, plants and butterflies and surveyed 600 visitors to assess the species richness they perceived, their subjective wellbeing, relatedness to nature and ecological knowledge. Linear models were used to investigate the relationships between these measures, while accounting for demographic variables. Results indicate that people do not perceive much of the biodiversity present in the gardens and that wellbeing-biodiversity relationships are mediated by relatedness to nature and not by ecological knowledge (species identification skills). Thus, people who perceived themselves as more related to nature benefited more from species-rich gardens, while there were no, or even negative effects, of biodiversity on wellbeing benefits for people who were less related to nature. Accordingly, we only found significant positive correlations between perceived and observed species richness for those respondents who were more connected to nature. Our results highlight that integrating more biodiversity in cities can only take us part of the way in mitigating the detrimental impact of urbanization on people’s experience of nature and wellbeing. Efforts should be also made to identify the means to enhance emotional connection to nature, the various components of nature that provide benefits to people and the dosage required to ensure the provision of these outcomes. This will enable a more profound understanding of the synergies and trade-offs between those benefiting components and other ecological indicators and socio-economic constrains, which in turn could help integrating nature-based solutions in urban planning. [1]Soga, M. & Gaston, K.J. 2016. Extinction of experience: the loss of human–nature interactions. Front Ecol Environ (14), 94-101. [2]Pett, T.J., Shwartz, A., Irvine, K.N., Dallimer, M. & Davies, Z.G. 2016. Unpacking the people–biodiversity paradox: A conceptual framework. BioScience (66), 576-583.peerReviewe