Abstract
Marine ecosystem services provide various benefits to people. In order to receive those benefits sustainably, conservation of marine environment is an important measure, and how to motivate people to marine conservation would be one of the keys to secure sustainable receipt of marine ecosystem services. This study explores perception of marine ecosystem services by residents of remote islands, namely Taketomi Town in Japan and how the perception would influence their behavioural intentions for marine conservation. A questionnaire survey was administered to the residents, and factor analysis and Structural Equation Model were applied to analyse data from 344 respondents. The results show that respondents perceive marine ecosystem services in four categories, namely “Benefits closely related to daily lives”, “Benefits from supporting services”, “Benefits from regulating services”, and “Benefits irrelevant to daily lives”. Among the four categories, “Benefits from regulating services” is the most influential to enhance behavioural intentions for marine conservation. The perception of marine ecosystem services by respondents of Taketomi Town and their influence on behavioural intentions for marine conservation are different from the results of previous studies administered to residents in the main island Honshu, Japan. This shows possibility that perception of marine ecosystem services and motivation for behavioural intention for marine conservation would relate to their connectednesspossibility to the sea.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Taketomi Town Government and community leaders for their support to the questionnaire survey. Appreciation goes to Nippon Foundation for financial support to this research through the Ocean Alliance Initiative Project, The University of Tokyo. This work was also supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Grant number 24121009).
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Wakita, K. et al. (2019). Marine Ecosystem Services: Perception of Residents from Remote Islands, Taketomi Town. In: Komatsu, T., Ceccaldi, HJ., Yoshida, J., Prouzet, P., Henocque, Y. (eds) Oceanography Challenges to Future Earth. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00138-4_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00138-4_24
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