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Recreational agroecosystem service value evidenced by mobile phone data: implications for incentive enhancement in terraced paddy land

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2024

Kota Mameno Open the ORCID record for Kota Mameno [Opens in a new window] ,
Arne Arnberger Open the ORCID record for Arne Arnberger [Opens in a new window] ,
Yasushi Shoji Open the ORCID record for Yasushi Shoji [Opens in a new window]  and
Takahiro Kubo Open the ORCID record for Takahiro Kubo [Opens in a new window]
Kota Mameno
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural Economics, Graduate school of Agricultural Science, Tohoku University, Aobaku, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan
Arne Arnberger
Affiliation:
Department of Spatial, Landscape and Infrastructural Sciences, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria
Yasushi Shoji
Affiliation:
Research Faculty of Agriculture, Hokkaido University, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Japan
Takahiro Kubo*
Affiliation:
Biodiversity Division, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Japan Department of Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
*
Corresponding author: Takahiro Kubo; Email: kubo.takahiro@nies.go.jp
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Summary

Farmland abandonment contributes to agroecosystem degradation and food crises. Sustainable farmland use requires a well-designed agri-environmental policy to provide farmers with incentives, including agroecosystem services apart from food production. One of these is recreation. Here, we focus on a Japanese terraced paddy land. We assessed seasonal changes in the value of recreational ecosystem services by integrating mobile phone big data of on-site visitors, collected between 2018 and 2020, into a valuation method. The application of mobile data enables the precise and consistent analysis of non-market agroecosystem services. The recreational value of the paddy land varied with season but overall was high. Sustainable farmland use provides social benefits, and we support the validity of agri-environmental policies that relate to economic incentives for agroecosystem conservation. However, the results show that the incentives provided by the public/government may be insufficient in comparison to this recreational value. Our findings provide information regarding the appropriate amount of economic support required to achieve sustainable agricultural land use in this setting.

Keywords

Agricultural land useagroecosystem servicesbig data applicationenvironmental valuation methodseasonalitytravel cost model
Type
Research Paper
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , September 2024 , pp. 219 - 226
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Foundation for Environmental Conservation

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