Ecosystem potentials to provide services in the view of direct users

- People are aware of the diversity of potentials of local ecosystems and their services.
- Frequent interaction with nature translates into higher ratings of its cultural and regulating potential.
- The better-educated and tourists perceive higher potentials of ecosystems to provide cultural services.
- Proximity to natural ecosystems hardly affects the way their potentials are perceived.
- The conducted survey encouraged respondents to reflect on the place of nature in their lives.

The study aimed to determine how direct users of local ecosystems perceive the potentials of those ecosystems to provide services, and how their assessments are influenced by different factors (i.e. socio-demographic characteristics, the actual use of services and proximity to particular ecosystems). To elicit social values we carried out a door-to-door questionnaire survey among residents and visitors (N = 251) staying in Wigry National Park and its vicinity (the Suwałki Lakeland of NE Poland), a renowned area of high natural value. Respondents were asked to detail the frequency of use made of 45 different provisioning and cultural services, and then to evaluate 7 local ecosystem types as regards their capacity to supply 11 groups of services. Direct users of ecosystems were shown to possess a capacity to differentiate local ecosystems in terms of their potentials to provide services. Better education, multifaceted interaction with nature and frequent use of natural resources are all found to contribute to better understanding and more accurate assessments of potential. Between-group hierarchy variations also show clearly how personal experience influences the assessment of ecosystem potentials. The perception of cultural and regulating potential in particular appeared to be affected greatly by the frequency of use of cultural services.