Impacts of nature deprivations during the COVID-19 pandemic: A pre-post comparison.

Nature provides a myriad of intangible and non-material services to people. However, urbanites are increasingly disconnected from the natural world. The consequences of this progressive disconnection from nature remain difficult to measure as this process is slow and long-term monitoring or large-scale manipulation on nature experiences are scarce. Measures to contain the spread of the recent COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., lockdowns) have potentially reduced or even suppressed nature experiences in cities. This situation provided an opportunity for conducting a longitudinal study that can serve as a sort of natural experiment to quantify the effects of nature deprivation on individuals' health, well-being and relationship to nature. We collected data on these variables from the same individuals inhabiting a large metropolis (Tel Aviv, Israel) twice, in 2018 (before) and during the lockdown in 2020. Our results confirmed that frequency, duration and quality of nature interactions dropped during the lockdown, while environmental attitudes and affinity towards nature remained similar. This was particularly true for people living in the least green neighborhoods, where a significant decrease in personal and social well-being was also found. Finally, affinity towards nature influenced well-being through nature experiences in 2018. The mediation effect was not significant in 2020, probably due to the decrease in nature experiences during the lockdown, but the direct relationship between affinity towards nature and well-being remained strong. These results provide insights into the means required to align the public health and conservation agendas to safeguard urbanites' health and well-being during a pandemic and mitigate the biodiversity crisis.

Addressing behavior in pollinator conservation policies to combat the implementation gap.

Solutions for conserving biodiversity lie in changing people's behavior. Ambitious international and national conservation policies frequently fail to effectively mitigate biodiversity loss because they rarely apply behavior-change theories. We conducted a gap analysis of conservation behavior-change interventions advocated in national conservation strategies with the Behavior Change Wheel (BCW), a comprehensive framework for systematically characterizing and designing behavior-change interventions. Using pollinator conservation as a case study, we classified the conservation actions listed in national pollinator initiatives in relation to intervention functions and policy categories of the BCW. We included all national-level policy documents from the European Union available in March 2019 that focused on conservation of pollinators (n = 8). A total of 610 pollinator conservation actions were coded using in-depth directed content analysis, resulting in the identification of 787 intervention function and 766 policy category codes. Overall, these initiatives did not employ the entire breadth of behavioral interventions. Intervention functions most frequently identified were education (23%) and environmental restructuring (19%). Least frequently identified intervention functions were incentivization (3%), and restriction (2%) and coercion were completely absent (0%). Importantly, 41% of all pollinator conservation actions failed to identify whose behavior was to be changed. Building on these analyses, we suggest that reasons for the serious implementation gap in national and international conservation policies is founded in insufficient understanding of which behavioral interventions to employ for most beneficial impacts on biodiversity and how to clearly specify the intervention targets. We recommend that policy advisors engage with behavior-change theory to design effective behavior-change interventions that underpin successful conservation policies.

Atención al Comportamiento en las Políticas de Conservación de los Polinizadores para Combatir la Brecha de Implementación Resumen Las soluciones para conservar a la biodiversidad se encuentran en el cambio del comportamiento de las personas. Las políticas ambiciosas de conservación nacional e internacional con frecuencia fallan en mitigar efectivamente la pérdida de la biodiversidad porque rara vez aplican teorías de cambios en el comportamiento. Realizamos un análisis de brecha de las intervenciones de cambios en el comportamiento de conservación promovidas en las estrategias de conservación nacional usando la Rueda de Cambios en el Comportamiento (BCW), un marco de trabajo completo para caracterizar y diseñar sistemáticamente las intervenciones de cambios en el comportamiento. Con la conservación de los polinizadores como un estudio de caso, clasificamos las acciones de conservación listadas en las iniciativas nacionales para los polinizadores en relación con las funciones de la intervención y las categorías de las políticas de la BCW. Incluimos todos los documentos de políticas a nivel nacional de la Unión Europea disponibles en marzo de 2019 cuyo enfoque fuera la conservación de los polinizadores (n = 8). Se codificó un total de 610 acciones para la conservación de los polinizadores mediante análisis profundos de contenido dirigidos, lo que resultó en la identificación de 787 códigos de función de la intervención y 766 códigos de categoría de las políticas. En general, estas iniciativas no emplearon la amplitud completa de las intervenciones de comportamiento. Las funciones de la intervención que fueron identificadas con mayor frecuencia fueron la educación (23%) y la reestructuración ambiental (19%); aquellas que fueron identificadas con menor frecuencia fueron la estimulación y el fomento (3%) y la restricción, mientras que la coerción estuvo totalmente ausente (0%). Es importante resaltar que el 41% de todas las acciones por la conservación de los polinizadores falló en la identificación de a quiénes se les debería cambiar el comportamiento. Con base en estos análisis sugerimos que las razones detrás de la brecha severa en la implementación de las políticas de conservación nacionales e internacionales están fundamentadas en el entendimiento insuficiente de cuáles intervenciones de comportamiento emplear para un impacto de mayor beneficio sobre la biodiversidad y cómo especificar claramente los objetivos de las intervenciones. Recomendamos que los asesores políticos se involucren con la teoría del cambio del comportamiento para así diseñar intervenciones efectivas de cambios en el comportamiento que respalden políticas exitosas de conservación.

Promoting meaningful and positive nature interactions for visitors to green spaces.

The increasing alienation of people from nature is profoundly concerning because people's interactions with nature affect well-being, affinity for nature, and support of biodiversity conservation. Efforts to restore or enhance people's interactions with nature are, therefore, important to ensure sustainable human and wildlife communities, but little is known about how this can be achieved. A key factor that shapes the way people interact with nature is their affinity for nature (often measured as nature relatedness [NR]). We explored how using cues to experience nature as a means to induce NR situationally can influence the quality of people's nature interactions on visits to green spaces and their positive affect after the visit. Cues to experience are cues that guide individuals on how to interact with nature. We surveyed 1023 visitors to a nature reserve to examine the relationships between trait (i.e., stable and long-lasting) and state (i.e., temporary, brief) NR, the quality of nature interactions, and positive affect. We also conducted a controlled experiment in which 303 participants spent 30 min outdoors on campus and reported the quality of their nature interactions and positive affect. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 9 cues-to-experience experimental groups (e.g., smell flowers, observe wildlife, turn off your phone) that differed in the psychological distance from nature that they prompted. Participants who received cues of close psychological distance from nature (e.g., smell and touch natural elements) interacted 3 to 4 times more with nature and reported 0.2 more positive affect than other participants. Our results demonstrate that providing cues to experience nature, which bring people closer to nature and potentially induce state NR, can enhance the quality of people's nature interactions and their positive affect. These results highlight the role of NR in high-quality nature interactions and suggest the use of cues to experience as a promising avenue for inducing state NR and promoting meaningful interactions with biodiversity, thus, reconciling conservation and well-being objectives.

Fomento a las Interacciones Significativas y Positivas con la Naturaleza para los Visitantes a las Áreas Verdes Resumen El creciente distanciamiento entre las personas y la naturaleza genera una preocupación seria, pues las interacciones entre las personas y la naturaleza afectan al bienestar, la afinidad por la naturaleza y al apoyo para la conservación de la biodiversidad. Por lo tanto, los esfuerzos por restaurar o mejorar las interacciones entre las personas y la naturaleza son importantes para asegurar la existencia de comunidades sustentables de humanos y fauna. A pesar de esto, se conoce muy poco sobre cómo se puede lograr lo anterior. Un factor clave que define la manera en la que las personas interactúan con la naturaleza es su afinidad por la misma (la cual se mide generalmente como vínculo con la naturaleza [VN]). Exploramos cómo el uso de las pautas para experimentar la naturaleza como los medios para inducir el VN circunstancial puede influir sobre la calidad de las interacciones entre las personas y la naturaleza durante sus visitas a áreas verdes y el efecto positivo posterior a estas visitas. Las pautas experimentales son pautas que guían a los individuos sobre cómo deben interactuar con la naturaleza. Encuestamos a 1023 visitantes en una reserva natural para examinar las relaciones entre el rasgo (es decir, estable y de larga duración) y el estado (es decir, temporal, breve) del VN, la calidad de las interacciones con la naturaleza y el efecto positivo. También realizamos un experimento controlado en el cual 303 participantes pasaron 30 minutos en el exterior y reportaron la calidad de sus interacciones con la naturaleza y del efecto positivo. Los participantes fueron asignados al azar a uno de los nueve grupos de pautas experimentales (p. ej.: oler flores, observar fauna, apagar su teléfono celular) cuya diferencia era el distanciamiento psicológico con la naturaleza que pautaba. Los participantes que recibieron pautas de distancia psicológica próxima a la naturaleza (p. ej.: oler y tocar elementos naturales) interactuaron 3-4 veces más con la naturaleza y reportaron un efecto 0.2 más positivo que los demás participantes. Nuestros resultados demuestran que el fomento de pautas para experiencias con la naturaleza, las cuales acercan a las personas con la naturaleza y tienen el potencial para inducir un estado VN, pueden mejorar la calidad de las interacciones que tienen las personas con la naturaleza y su efecto positivo. Estos resultados resaltan el papel del VN en las interacciones de alta calidad con la naturaleza y sugieren que el uso de pautas exerimentale es una vía prometedora para inducir el estado VN y promover las interacciones significativas con la biodiversidad, reconciliando así a la conservación con los objetivos de bienestar.

Exploring biodiversity and users of campsites in desert nature reserves to balance between social values and ecological impacts.

Protected areas (PAs) are key conservation areas designed to limit the impacts of human activities on biodiversity. PAs also provide great opportunities for individuals to experience nature complexity, through recreational activities, and can contribute to restore the non-material and intangible services nature provides to people (i.e., cultural ecosystem services). However, recreational activities may negatively affect biodiversity. Identifying the right balance between promoting nature interactions and safeguarding biodiversity in PAs is challenging. Current knowledge gaps on the social value and ecological impacts of recreational activities, such as camping in PAs, hinder our ability to address this challenge. This is particularly true for PAs located in desert ecosystems. In this interdisciplinary study, we surveyed biodiversity and people to assess ecological impacts and social values of campsites in desert PAs in Israel. Ecological surveys included birds, plants, rodents and scorpions in campsites and control plots. We conducted two social surveys: (1) in situ survey of campsite users (N = 280) on satisfaction, motivations and perceptions of campsites and (2) online nation-wide survey (N = 322) on perceptions of campsites and investigation of the attributes individuals prioritize in campsites. Our results demonstrate that when desert campsites are located outside nature-rich areas (i.e. the wadis), they have relatively moderate negative impact on biodiversity for three out of the four taxa studied (birds, scorpions and rodents). Bird communities were dominated by synanthropic species in high intensity campsites. Surprisingly, even when campsites were located in nature-poor areas, users' satisfaction was relatively high. Among the broader population, ecological quality (i.e. vegetation complexity) did not have strong influence on people's preferences of/for campsites, and comfort-related aspects were prioritized over vegetation in campsites. Overall, our results demonstrate that placing desert campsites outside ecologically rich areas can serve as optimal solution to balance impacts on biodiversity and social value of recreation activities in PAs.

No country for old men: street use and social diet in urban Newcastle.

Within affluent societies, people who grow up in deprived areas begin reproduction much earlier than their affluent peers, and they display a number of other behaviors adapted to an environment in which life will be short. The psychological mechanisms regulating life-history strategies may be sensitive to the age profile of the people encountered during everyday activities. We hypothesized that this age profile might differ between environments of different socioeconomic composition. We tested this hypothesis with a simple observational study comparing the estimated age distribution of people using the streets in an affluent and a socioeconomically deprived neighborhood which were closely matched in other ways. We were also able to use the UK census to compare the age profile of observed street users with the actual age profile of the community. We found that people over 60 years of age were strikingly less often observed on the street in the deprived than in the affluent neighborhood, whereas young adults were observed more often. These differences were not reflections of the different age profiles of people who lived there, but rather of differences in which residents use the streets. The way people use the streets varies with age in different ways in the affluent and the deprived neighborhoods. We argue that chronic exposure to a world where there are many visible young adults and few visible old ones may activate psychological mechanisms that produce fast life-history strategies.

Variation in cooperative behaviour within a single city.

Human cooperative behaviour, as assayed by decisions in experimental economic dilemmas such as the Dictator Game, is variable across human populations. Within-population variation has been less well studied, especially within industrial societies. Moreover, little is known about the extent to which community-level variation in Dictator Game behaviour relates to community-level variation in real-world social behaviour. We chose two neighbourhoods of the city of Newcastle upon Tyne that were similar in most regards, but at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of level of socioeconomic deprivation. We administered Dictator Games to randomly-selected residents, and also gathered a large number of more naturalistic measures of cooperativeness. There were dramatic differences in Dictator Game behaviour between the two neighbourhoods, with the mean allocation to the other player close to half the stake in the affluent neighbourhood, and close to one tenth of the stake in the deprived neighbourhood. Moreover, the deprived neighbourhood was also characterised by lower self-reported social capital, higher frequencies of crime and antisocial behaviour, a higher frequency of littering, and less willingness to take part in a survey or return a lost letter. On the other hand, there were no differences between the neighbourhoods in terms of the probability of helping a person who dropped an object, needed directions to a hospital, or needed to make change for a coin, and people on the streets were less likely to be alone in the deprived neighbourhood than the affluent one. We conclude that there can be dramatic local differences in cooperative behaviour within the same city, and that these need further theoretical explanation.