Data on public preferences for soil-based ecosystem services in Germany.

This article describes the data from a discrete choice experiment survey into public preferences for soil-based ecosystem services. The survey was conducted online in June and July 2021 on a representative sample of 1500 German citizens. Four soil-based ecosystem services were included as attributes in the discrete choice experiment: climate regulation, drought protection, flood protection and clean drinking water. The collected data includes the stated choices from the choice experiment, measurements of knowledge about and awareness of soils' contributions to human well-being, experience with droughts and floods, attitudes towards agriculture and environment and motivations for the stated choices as well as socio-demographic information. The dataset includes postcodes for all respondent, thus allowing for spatial analysis. The data can be used to investigate public preferences for soil-based ecosystem services and the underlying motivations.

Do drivers of nature visitation vary spatially? The importance of context for understanding visitation of nature areas in Europe and North America.

Nature visitation is important, both culturally and economically. Given the contribution of nature recreation to multiple societal goals, comprehending determinants of nature visitation is essential to understand the drivers associated with the popularity of nature areas, for example, to inform land-use planning or site management strategies to maximise benefits. Understanding the factors related to nature, tourism and recreation can support the management of nature areas and thereby, also conservation efforts and biodiversity protection. This study applied a Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) to quantify the spatially varying influence of different factors associated with nature visitation in Europe and North America. Results indicated that some explanatory variables were stationary for all sites (age 15 to 65, population density (within 25 km), GDP, area, built-up areas, plateaus, and mountains). In contrast, others exhibited significant spatial non-stationarity (locally variable): needle-leaf trees (conifers), trails, travel time, roads, and Red List birds and amphibians. Needle-leaf trees and travel time were found to be negatively significant in Europe. Roads were found to have a significant positive effect in North America. Trails and Red List bird species were found to have a positive effect in both North America and North Europe, with a greater effect in Europe. Red List amphibians was the only spatially variable predictor to have both a positive and negative impact, with selected sites in North America and northern Europe being positive, whereas Iceland and central and southern Europe were negative. The scale of the response-predictor relationship (bandwidth) of these locally variable predictors was smallest for Red List amphibians at 1033 km, with all other spatially variable predictors between 9558 and 12,285 km. The study demonstrates the contribution that MGWR, a spatially explicit model, can make to support a deeper understanding of processes associated with nature visitation in different geographic contexts.