Abstract:
Botanic Gardens play a vital role in maintaining the city's ecological balance, providing ecosystem service (ES) to residents, and leading to better quality of environment and life. However, the social assessment of ESs provided by Gullele Botanic Garden (GBG) is still limited. The present study aims to assess ecosystem services, visitors’ perceptions, and determinant factors. The semi-structured interview was conducted with key informants, including experts and visitors, who have specific knowledge about ESs to identify and characterize ESs provided by GBG. A questionnaire survey solicited responses to positive and negative GBG ecosystem service attributes from 316 respondents selected by the convenience sampling method from July 1–30, 2023. The data was analysed qualitatively and quantitatively (descriptive and inferential analysis). The result of the study revealed that GBG delivers ecotourism and recreation, education and research, aesthetic value, global climate regulation, microclimate regulation, erosion regulation, food supply, medicinal plants, genetic resources, and habitat services for birds, fauna, and flora. The result of the face-to-face questionnaire indicated that an average of 92.1% of visitors showed a high perception of the cultural ecosystem services of GBG, while 86% of visitors showed a positive perception of the regulating and supporting services of GBG. As well as, 70.1% of visitors revealed a positive perception of the provisioning ecosystem services delivered by GBG. Binary logistic regression revealed that significant differences in perception were found across most socio-demographic variables, including gender, age group, educational level, distance from the garden, and frequency of visit. It can be concluded that GBG delivers a number of ESs for the community, and many visitors had positive perceptions of the ESs provided by GBG. However, visitors’ positive perceptions were affected by socio-demographic differences. So, GBG should get more attention from governmental and non-governmental organizations to deliver more ecosystem services, and it is also appropriate to create awareness for the whole community about ecosystem services since public awareness can influence policymaking and promote sustainable development
