Perceptions of Cultural Ecosystem Services: spatial differences in urban and rural areas of Kokemäenjoki, Finland

Abstract

<p>This study aims to identify and evaluate the spatial distribution of Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) benefits perceived by people in both urban and rural areas. A public participation GIS (PPGIS) approach was applied with local people who responded to an online survey and mapped their important places related to CES benefits in the Kokemäenjoki area. We explore the perceived ecosystem services of the community using different infrastructure types (green, grey, yellow and blue) based on the Corine Land Cover (CLC) classes. We identified spatial patterns of mapped important places using kernel dens ity estimation and related CES benefit associations with the infrastructures using chi-square residuals. We found that CES in urban areas are provided more often when there is more than one type of infrastructure (e.g., grey and green; grey and blue), but grey infrastructures are preferred in urban areas, while blue infrastructures produce more CES benefits in rural areas.</p>