Valuation of Visitor Perception of Urban Forest Ecosystem Services in Kuala Lumpur

Abstract

Urban forests play a vital role in maintaining the city ecological balance and providing ecosystem services to citizens. Ecosystem services lead to better quality of life, better environmental quality, and more sustainable urban growth. However, many emerging nations have often progressed at the price of lowering and sacrificing forest coverage, which has a negative impact on the benefits that the public receives from natural green spaces. As a result, the goals of this research were to ascertain visitor impressions of urban forests in Kuala Lumpur, to assess the value assigned by visitors to urban forests in Kuala Lumpur, and to investigate the elements that impact the willingness to pay. A questionnaire-based field study was conducted on a total of 254 respondents among Taman Tugu Urban Forest visitors, Kuala Lumpur. The results show that visitor perceptions of regulating services, cultural services, and supporting services were positive, with high-level score values of 4.74, ±0.40, 4.69, ±0.37, and 4.70, ±0.50. Furthermore, provisioning services were perceived to be of moderately high level (3.49, ±1.12), and visitor perceptions of urban forest amenities were positive, with high-level scores (4.39, ±0.53). Overall, this indicates that visitors had a very good perception of Taman Tugu Urban Forest ecosystem services. However, when we looked at the factors that contributed to the willingness to pay for the conservation of urban forests and entry, only the perception of the amenities provided at Taman Tugu had a significant relationship with the willingness to pay. A total of 79.1% of visitors expressed their willingness to pay, for forest conservation, an average payment value of MYR 51.32 per year, while 65% of visitors were willing to pay, as entry fees at urban forests, an average payment value of MYR 3.07 per person. It can be concluded that visitors had a positive perception of urban forests in Kuala Lumpur and were willing to contribute for conservation and entry fee purposes. We hope that the findings of this research contribute to a better understanding of urban forest ecosystem services in Kuala Lumpur and visitor perception. In addition, this study could also be useful to policy makers to formulate a specific policy focus on urban forests by comprehensively and holistically including the monetary value of the ecosystem services provided, considering public opinion and needs, and performing financial allocation for conserving and managing urban forests. This is to ensure that the urban sustainable development goals and smart city aims can be achieved.

Sociocultural valuation of ecosystem services in protected areas: A study applied to Southeast Spain

“…Low values for 'Environmental education and awareness' shows that the population does not consider that the existence of the park is improving the awareness and education of the population; therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the environmental awareness programme developed in relation to this natural space. These results differ from those obtained by Dehghani Pour et al (2023), Pérez-Sánchez et al (2021 and Jamean and Abas (2023). The development of awareness programmes would increase recognition of ecosystems and the services they provide (Dehghani Pour et al, 2023).…”

“…Within the cultural category, 'Aesthetic values of the environment' is one of the highest rated ESs, as in other studies in China (Hochmalová et al, 2022), Malaysia (Jamean & Abas, 2023) or Iran (Dehghani Pour et al, 2023). This differs from the results obtained by Purwestri et al (2023) in the Czech Republic, which may be due to the fact that the forests there are being subjected to prolonged drought, low rainfall and high temperatures.…”

“…Other studies also show that regulating and cultural services categories are the most highly valued, for example, the study by Jamean and Abas (2023) on visitors of urban forests in Kuala Lumpur, or by Zoderer et al (2016) in the Central Alps. According to these authors the better perception of regulating and cultural services may be due to their direct relationship with the landscape and multifunctional land uses.…”

Reconstructing the ecological restoration pattern from the perspective of ecosystem health assessment in a typical black soil region of Northeast China

“…However, following rapid urbanization, the ecosystem health in rapidly expanded areas was deteriorated, especially around the central urban area of Siping City. These areas experienced large conversions from cultivated or forestland to construction land, and therefore lost significant ecosystem services, thus needing urgent restoration (Jamean and Abas, 2023;Ren C. Y. et al, 2023).…”

Avian urban ecology in Nepal: A call for attention

“…Apart from the above opportunities, socio-economic research on how urban human population value birds, green space and biodiversity, their willingness to pay for such ecosystem services could be another avenue of research. For example: about 65% of the visitors in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia expressed a willingness to pay an average entry fee of 0.66 USD per person to access regulating, cultural and supporting services of urban forest (Jamean & Abas 2023). Studies like such might help to make policies to implement green taxes from urban residents as well as entry permits in urban forests that can be used for urban biodiversity management.…”