Understanding services from ecosystem and facilities provided by urban green spaces: A use of partial profile choice experiment

This study aims to understand the preferences regarding 15 services in ecosystem and facilities provided by urban green spaces using a partial profile choice experiment. The method is one type of discrete choice experiment in which researchers present respondents with only a subset of all the attributes under consideration. Therefore, it has the advantage of valuating large numbers of attributes simultaneously. In Northern Japan's Sapporo city area, which is the site of our study, the future vision for urban green spaces needs to be revised, and thus a valuation of the services from ecosystems and facilities provided by urban green spaces is necessary. The survey was conducted in December 2017 by a contracted research company. Respondents were members of the general public that were registered at the research company and live in the study site. The results showed that overall, services from the ecosystem were preferred over those from facilities. “Forming the landscape” and “Providing places to interact with the forest,” which are generally considered requirements of urban green spaces, were highly valuated, as were “Conserving biodiversity” and “Providing evacuation sites,” neither of which have been previously considered major services in the context of Japan's urban green space management. Finally, despite Japan's declining birth rate and aging population, “Providing facilities for the elderly” was valuated lower than “Providing facilities for children.”