This paper aims to understand the contribution of geographical information in the perception of linguistic variation. A total of 813 mental maps collected among young speakers from different cities in Tuscany have been analyzed via an open-access web dialectometric tool (Gabmap). In particular, the study seeks to verify the role of geographic distance and the place of residence of the respondents in modeling perceived variation. The relationship between dialect grouping as made by linguists and perceived taxonomies of sublinguistic areas is also investigated. Results show that geographical proximity between mapped areas significantly predicts the perception of dialect similarity. Our participants made their decisions looking at (1) a keen sense of spatial contiguity, and (2) the synchronic presence of linguistic differences between the Tuscan subregions. Moreover, classification uncertainty grows when the mapped areas are very close to, or very distant from, the participants’ places of residence. Methodological and linguistic perspectives of mental maps in folk linguistics are finally discussed.

Economic valuation of ecosystem services by stated preferences techniques is usually used by policy-makers to develop environmental management practices. Critics of the contingent valuation (CV) method have argued that respondents are influenced by several factors, which mean that people do not apply economic motives in responding to CV questions. This study examines the influence of individuals’ environmental behaviour and knowledge about the good concerned on the CV results and the CV problem of benefit aggregation in order to determine the extent of the hypothetical market. Here a CV study in the Doñana National and Natural Park (Spain) found that both individual environmental behaviour and knowledge influenced willingness to pay for sustaining specific ecosystem services provided by the biodiversity of Doñana. A distance-decay function was found, which determined the social benefits of the ecosystem services of Doñana. The study illustrates the importance of understanding non-economic motives behind values in order to obtain further information which can support decision-making in environmental management.