Ecosystem Services 26 (2017) 1–9

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Ecosystem Services
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecoser

Recreational cultural ecosystem services: How do people describe

the value?
Stålhammar Sanna a,⇑, Pedersen Eja b
a
Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, Lund University, Sweden
b
Environmental Psychology, Dep. of Architecture and Built Environment, Lund University, Sweden

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Different ways of viewing human-nature interactions affect the ways in which these are conceptualized
Received 15 March 2017 and operationalized with regards to cultural ecosystem services (CES). To clarify if some conceptualiza-
Received in revised form 22 May 2017 tions provide more appropriate descriptions of benefits, these need to be discussed in relation to the lived
Accepted 25 May 2017
experience. This paper addresses some aspects of the controversy around the use of the concept of CES
Available online 7 June 2017
and associated framing of ‘values’. Our aim is to understand potential distinctions between individuals’
expressions of values of their experiences and the language of value of ES. We use Swedish focus group
Keywords:
material formed to understand how individuals perceive and express their values of the experiences of
Cultural ecosystem services
Recreation
spending time in natural environments in their own words. We apply an interpretivist approach inspired
CES valuation by grounded theory and present our findings as the broader interpretative repertoire ‘axiomatic value’.
Intangible values The interpretative repertoire informed three discourses that participants describe as valuable in relation
Ecosystem services framework to experiences in nature: ‘indivisibility’, ‘incommensurability’, and ‘the goodness of perceived natural-
ness’. The latter comprised the underlying themes ‘nature as authentic’, ‘nature as healing’ and ‘nature
as beauty, magic and movement’. We discuss implications for conceptualizations of value and question
the appropriateness of the non-contextual and categorical language of ES.
Ó 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction Pascual et al., 2010). Conceptualizing and operationalizing benefits

There is more than one way to explore, define and understand
human-nature interaction. Alternative theories and analytical
strategies start from different ontologies, adhere to different epis-
temologies and draw on different methods thus giving rise to a
variety of framings of complex human-nature interaction (Moon
and Blackman, 2014). An appreciation of this methodological vari-
ety implies, we argue, that we need to scrutinize available framings
and discuss if some allow for more appropriate and useful concep-
tualizations of the benefits that society derives from nature. We
seek to call attention to some aspects of the controversy around
the use of the cultural ecosystem services (CES) concept and asso-
ciated framing of ‘values’, based on individuals’ own descriptions of
the benefits of nature, captured empirically in a focus group study.
Ecosystem services (ES) is a contested framework (Schröter
et al., 2014) that is intended to capture the benefits of nature to
society and human wellbeing through assessing monetary and
non-monetary values of ecosystem functions (MEA, 2005;
⇑ Corresponding author at: Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies,
Lund University, Sölvegatan 10, 223 62 Lund, Sweden.
E-mail address: sanna.stalhammar@lucsus.lu.se (S. Stålhammar).
of nature imply several normative choices making the application
of ES fundamentally political (Kull et al., 2015). The subcategory
of cultural ecosystem services defined as the nonmaterial benefits
people obtain from ecosystems through spiritual enrichment, cog-
nitive development, reflection, recreation, and aesthetic experi-
ences (MEA, 2005) is considered particularly difficult to
operationalize because of its intangibility (Milcu et al., 2013). In
applications of the ES concept, socio-cultural values are assumed
to be quantifiable and correlational to ecological functions and
structures, which hides unresolved conflicts about the conflation
of ‘nonmaterial’ values with calculable benefits of CES (Fraser
et al., 2016; Kull et al., 2015; Daniel et al., 2012). Fraser et al.
(2016) point out that the conception of culture as a separate cate-
gory from material values in nature is a Western, post-
Enlightenment, Cartesian phenomenon that does not translate well
to some indigenous ontologies. James (2015) argues that ES as
assumed to be directly derivable from ecosystem properties cannot
provide a satisfactory account of the cultural benefits that people
derive from places, processes or events. The benefits of a place,
for example, are often dependent on a particular place rather than
a type of place and the service it gives rise to cannot be seen as a
separate function.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2017.05.010
2212-0416/Ó 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
2 S. Stålhammar, E. Pedersen / Ecosystem Services 26 (2017) 1–9
Various value-typologies to help classify social value of ES have
been suggested within the ES literature as for example Chan et al.
(2012) who outlined eight binary and non-mutually exclusive
dimensions and Kenter et al. (2015) who distinguished shared/so-
cial values into transcendental, cultural and societal, communal,
group, deliberated, other-regarding values and value to society. It
is acknowledged that socio-cultural values are ill-suited for com-
modity metaphors and cannot be captured by conventional mone-
tary valuation in meaningful ways (Milcu et al., 2013), thus various
non-monetary valuation methods have been recommended
(Kenter et al., 2015; Kelemen et al., 2014; Kenter, 2014). Given that
the application of the ES concept is situated within mainstream
economics and policy, it initially adopted a utilitarian framing of
value building on preferences (Gómez-Baggethun et al., 2010).
Even some non-monetary valuation methods are similar to the
neoclassical monetary valuation approach in their assumptions of
quantification and aggregation of individually perceived values
(Raymond et al., 2014). However, recent and ongoing develop-
ments of theory and method in relation to shared, plural and cul-
tural values using deliberate techniques such as demonstrated by
Irvine et al. (2016) and Kenter et al. (2016b) shows the determina-
tion to fundamentally challenge the utilitarian framing and the
analytical aggregation of individual values based on consequential-
ist assumptions. The discussion on deliberated values includes the
important recognition of value formation, which is the idea that
preferences and values are not pre-formed but influenced by the
valuation process and method (Kenter et al., 2016a). Chan et al.
(2016) call for a third category of relational ES values alongside
instrumental and intrinsic values. The launch of the new concep-
tual framework from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiver-
sity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) shifted their discussions from
ES values to nature’s gifts, and opened up for multiple knowledge
systems such as that of western science, indigenous and locals, and
practitioners (Díaz et al., 2015). Adhering to the critique of value
monism (e.g. Norton, 2015), they emphasize the importance of a
pluralistic value approach which allows for ‘‘diverse valuation” of
instrumental, intrinsic and relational value. Fish et al. (2016) have
also developed a framework aligned with the new IPBES approach,
which presents CES as a relational interaction between environ-
mental spaces and cultural practices, dependent on the biophysical
domain and generating benefits in terms of experiences, identities
and capabilities.
Regardless of conceptual development of novel frameworks and
valuation methodologies, various ontological and epistemological
questions regarding the foundation of people’s values of nature
remain (Kenter et al., 2016c, Table 1). Moreover, it should be recog-
nized that there is no consensus regarding what constitutes ‘value’
of nature for individuals. There is thus a potential distinction
between how individuals experience and express their values of
nature and the language of value of ecosystem services. In order
to understand to what extent ES valuation can be seen as represen-
Table 1
Scheme of focus group interviews. Order in which the interviews were carried out
(Order), number of participants in each group (N), characteristics of the host (Host),
and venue of the focus group interview (Location).
Order N Host Location
1 7 Small town dweller Home of the
2 6 Member of a dog owner club Clubhouse
3 6 Environmental NGO-member Home of the
4 6 Member of an outdoor club Home of the
5 6 Secondary school student School
6 5 Young city dweller, no children Home of the
7 7 Culturally active person Home of the
8 11 Church member Church
Total 54
tative of individuals ontological accounts of value, we need to
explore how benefits of natural environments are expressed by
individuals independent of ready-made frameworks of value. Of
special interest here are the benefits lay people allocate to nature
experiences in their daily life as this is often the focus of recre-
ational CES assessments. Interpretative methods can help us
develop an in-depth understanding of the meanings of values of
ecosystems that lay people describe and the reasons they are val-
ued in certain ways, through understanding the individual and
communal narratives of places (Kenter, 2016).
The aim of this study is to understand individuals’ expressions
of values from an interpretative perspective and how this can
inform the language of value of ecosystem services. We address
the following questions:
1. How do local inhabitants perceive and describe how they value
their experiences in nearby ecosystem?
2. What are the implications of these descriptions for valuation of
CES?
Our analysis uses empirical material from focus groups that
were initially formed and designed to answer the first research
question of how individuals perceive and in their own words
express how they value their experiences of spending time in nat-
ural environments. In the qualitative analysis, a second research
question emerged to form the basis for developing the main argu-
ment in this paper. In using an interpretative approach, we follow
the call from IPBES and Chan et al. (2016) to diversify the perspec-
tive of how values of ES can be analyzed, and explore the plurality
of values individuals assign to ecosystems in a specific geographi-
cal context. We evaluate how our findings can inform the current
debates on conceptualizations of value.
2. Method
2.1. Mode of inquiry
Following Charmaz (2006) we applied the constructivist version
of grounded theory. This approach was found suitable since cate-
gories and themes are supposed to emerge from data without any
interference from preconceived ideas and interpretations associ-
ated with, in our case, categories of values of cultural ecosystem
services. Constructivist grounded theory is rooted in symbolic
interactionism according to which individuals construct reality
and create meaning based on symbols and social interaction
(Cutliffe, 2000). We borrowed the concept of interpretative reper-
toires from discursive psychology (Wetherell et al., 2001), also
rooted in symbolic interactionism, to identify which ideas, notions,
and metaphors participants drew on to articulate their experiences
and express their values of nature. Interpretative repertoires can be
thought of as coherent ways of speaking about something as well as
a framework that is drawn from for conversations and construction
of discourse (Edley, 2001). The concept can be employed to reveal
how attitudes are motivated, justified and resisted by discourses
displayed in talk (Potter and Hepburn, 2007). It was here used to
conceptualize the general construction of participants’ ideas of val-
ues of nature in conversation. The process of articulation of values
host of nature was seen as constructed directly through interactions of
talk and not through examining mental processes or through
host
host
expressing ethical standpoints that are hidden in the conversation.
The combination of these approaches were presumed to be useful
host in this study since they align with what could be considered a rela-
host tional approach to value, with interaction being the basis for inter-
pretation, and where the distinction between subjective and
objective is seen as a discursive construction. This combined
 S. Stålhammar, E. Pedersen / Ecosystem Services 26 (2017) 1–9
approach allowed us to gain an understanding of the meaning and
the characteristics of participants’ descriptions of the benefits they
experience from visits in the natural environment.
2.2. Focus groups
To answer the first research question, a method that would give
rich descriptions of how individuals perceive and in their own
words express how they value their experiences of spending time
in natural environments was desired. Focus groups interviews
were found suitable as in applying this method, people are encour-
aged to reflect on a topic collectively, allowing a broader perspec-
tive to emerge (Robson, 2011). It is an established interpretative
method that can be used to elicit social and cultural values and
meanings of natural environments (O’Brien, 2003). In the case of
ecosystem services, focus groups can allow for many types of
(ecosystem services) values to be expressed (Kenter, 2014) as well
as shared rather than individual norms and discourses related to
values of nature (van Scholte et al., 2015). The components emerge
from the ground, from the experience and language of individuals
and thereby aligns with the bottom-up perspective of this study.
The focus group procedure was based on the following princi-
ples: (i) that data would be analyzed as a total data-set, (ii) that
participants’ perception of cultural ecosystem services and the val-
ues of services should be captured, but supposedly not in those
terms, and (iii) that services and values not previously defined
could emerge from the discussions and contribute to the result.
To provide a common base across focus groups, the moderator
initiated the focus group session with a three-minute slide show
comprising photos representing peri-urban greenery with bodies
of water and wetlands common in the south of Sweden. She then
opened the discussion with the question ‘Is this a type of natural
environment that you are familiar with?’. The interview guide
included questions about the following issues: how local natural
environments are used (e.g. ‘What do you do when you visit nearby
nature areas?’, ‘Do you prefer to go alone or with someone else?’),
the perceived benefits (e.g. ‘What are natural environments good
for?’, ‘What do you get from spending time in nature?’, ‘What does
the experience do to your wellbeing?’) and values (e.g. ‘What is the
value of natural environments for you?’, ‘Are there other ways to
achieve the same experience as from nature?’). We also included
questions that allowed for the discussion on valuation of nature
(e.g. ‘How do you think the benefits your experience of nature could
be valued?’). Follow-up questions and probes were included for
clarification and elaboration. All issues were covered in the eight
focus groups interviews, though the questions within each issue
varied depending on what the participants brought up sponta-
neously during the conversation. Each discussion lasted one hour.
Subsequently the participants filled in a short protocol that cap-
tured age, gender, outdoor habits, and outdoor identity. Outdoor
habits were described using the four alternatives ‘almost never’,
‘a few times a month’, ‘a few times a week’, and ‘almost every
day’, and comprised take walks, walk the dog, get some fresh air,
play with children, exercise, go for an outing, pick mushrooms
when it is the season, hunting or working. Outdoor identity was
captured with the question ‘‘How much of a city-person or
outdoor-person are you?” on a 5-point scale from 1 – ‘mainly
city-person’ to 5 – ‘mainly outdoor person’. All focus groups were
moderated and audio-taped by the second author. A professional
was hired for the transcriptions.
It should be recognized that even though many Swedes would
describe themselves as nature-loving people, all Swedish citizens
of all ages and social strata are not active participants in outdoor
recreation and as society is becoming increasingly multicultural,
new forms of recreational practices can be expected that will trans-
form the old ones (Jensen and Ouis, 2014).
3
2.3. Sampling procedure
The sampling procedure was purposeful, meaning that we
selected participants who could potentially provide a detailed,
nuanced and rich material (Robson, 2011). Participants were
recruited through a contact person for each group, here called
the host, who in turn enrolled people from their network. This
combination of convenience sampling, i.e. contacting an organiza-
tion or person within once network, and snowball sampling, i.e.
asking this person to suggest people that could be interesting to
include in the focus group, is a common approach (e.g. Asah
et al., 2014; Quyen et al., 2017) thought not always explicitly
described. The sampling method decreases the risk for drop-outs
and increases the likeliness that participants would feel comfort-
able in the interview situation (MacDougall and Fudge, 2001). Six
of the hosts were found via local organizations and two from the
researcher’s informal network. Each host was informed that the
interview would refer to ‘everyday experiences of nature’, and that
the group should include six to ten people, a recommended focus
group size (Morgan, 1998). The sampling started strategically with
the aim to gather as rich material as possible. Theme saturation, in
this case based on the criteria that no new data that further
explained the categories emerged (Bowen, 2008) were obtained
after four focus group interviews. The sampling then became the-
oretically driven (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), with the main purpose
to find stories that would contest and possibly invalidate the
emerging themes (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). The following focus
groups therefore included young people, people living in a more
urban setting, people with a focus on cultural activities rather than
nature encounter, and people with a possible different view on
spiritual experiences. The already defined themes were found to
be relevant also among these groups and no new themes emerged,
wherefore no more focus group interviews were carried out.
2.4. Participants
In total, 54 people (age 19–83, 67% women) participated in the
focus groups. Half of the sample, 50% rated themselves as more of
an ‘outdoor person’ than a ‘city person’, a slightly higher frequency
than previously found among Swedish populations comprising
only city-dwellers (Gunnarsson et al., 2017). Most of the partici-
pants spent time outdoors at least weekly to take walks, get some
fresh air, and exercise, and in a Swedish context therewith encoun-
ter natural environments in some form. No statistically significant
relationships were found between the frequencies of outdoor
activity and the identity as an outdoor person or city person, with
one exception, i.e. picking mushrooms which was reported more
frequent among outdoor people (Mann–Whitney U = 195.5,
z = 3.09, p < 0.01, r = 0,42). Hence, considering one-self as a city
person did in most cases not lead to less outdoor activities. It was
concluded that the sampling procedure had resulted in a total sam-
ple that met the criteria of being able to offer detailed, nuanced and
rich descriptions of nature experiences in their daily life, also
assuring a variation in identity.
2.5. Analysis procedure
The starting point for our analysis was to understand how indi-
viduals describe values of their experiences without using pre-
defined categories of values. The interview protocol built on an
assumed CES perspective, based on what the experience does for
their wellbeing or how it benefits them. The discussions were ana-
lyzed more broadly in terms of how participants perceived the
value, in a broad sense, of their experiences. This allowed us to
interpret how participants articulated their wellbeing of experi-
ences. The analysis included open coding that resulted in the find-
4 S. Stålhammar, E. Pedersen / Ecosystem Services 26 (2017) 1–9
ings being organized into three levels including a general interpre-
tative repertoire, themes and subthemes. The three levels were
outlined through an iterative and constant comparative approach
between codes, categories and the transcribed material.
The analysis technique followed the constructivist grounded
theory constant comparative approach of initial, focused and the-
matic coding (Charmaz, 2006). Line by line coding of the tran-
scripts was initially carried out to capture fundamental ideas in
participant’s expressions. Focused coding then formed a more sys-
tematic analysis and refining of codes into categories. During the-
matic coding, categories were compared through careful reflection
of the data and formed into what we refer to as themes and sub-
themes. It should be noted that while the themes capture how par-
ticipants perceived value, the sub-themes refer to the specific char-
acteristics of nature that participants described as valuable. As an
example, a common experience among participants was that
spending time in natural environments made them relax; this
was coded as if these environments were perceived as ‘cal
ming’/’soothing’. Together with other codes based on stories of
how nature provided opportunities to recovering from stress and
likewise, ‘calming’ formed the category ‘restorative’. In the final
results, this category is part of the sub-theme ‘nature as healing’.
However, the way that participants described the benefits of nat-
ure and the conceptualization of value of their experiences are
described by all three overarching themes. By using the concept
of an interpretative repertoire, we identified a general idea of
how values of participant’s experiences seemed to be constructed
and thought of. The repertoire is a central metaphor organized
around a cluster of terms as a result of coding (Edley, 2001); in
our case, what participants were drawing on when expressing their
values of experiences in nature. The interpretative repertoire
emerged from the themes, and simultaneously characterized and
informed the themes. Throughout the analysis process, emerging
categories and themes were tested in an iterative parallel process
comparing directly with primary data, i.e. the transcribed inter-
views, resulting in renewed understanding, adjustments of cate-
gories and themes, and confirmation of results. The material was
initially coded and categorized by the two authors independently,
following the same procedure, but without communicating. The
emerging themes were then compared and discussed in a series
of meetings. Themes were aligning across the coders and were
backed up by the same citations, pointing at a large inter-coder
agreement (Campbell et al., 2013). Transcribed focus-groups, codes
and emerging categories were analyzed in the software Atlas.ti7.
3. Results
Findings from the qualitative analyses are presented here as one
repertoire with underlying discourses and themes. The repertoire
can be seen as a central metaphor of a broader construction that
informs the underlying themes and sub-themes that participants
associate and describe as valuable in relation to experiences in nat-
ure. The themes and sub-themes should be seen as overlapping
and not mutually exclusive. Themes 3.2 and 3.3 comprise charac-
teristics of the values that the participants allocated to their nature
experiences as they described them. Theme 3.4 and the underlying
sub-themes present what participants described as meaningful
and valuable during their experiences with reference to how they
view nature.
3.1. The repertoire of axiomatic value: ‘‘Nature’s value is self-evident”
Overall, the participants had difficulties describing their experi-
ences in detail, in terms of values and in relation to quality of life.
We here refer to this overriding notion as the axiomatic repertoire
of values which was frequently expressed when participants were
asked to articulate and explain how experiences in nature were
valuable to them. When asked what experiences in nature ‘‘does
to you”, a frequent reply was that it ‘‘is difficult to describe”. Some
participants answered simply that it ‘‘does a lot I think” but did not
elaborate further. When probed about why or what it does, one
said that: ‘‘it simply makes me happy but I cannot describe it”, or
‘‘just feels good”. Participants did not elaborate on or show interest
in reflecting on why or how the experiences made them feel good
or happy, it was seen as self-evident and self-explanatory. When
asked if they could describe how their experiences contribute to
their wellbeing, one group laughed and one person replied ‘‘we
would be very poor without nature”. Another participant put it
as: ‘‘it is quality of life to go for walks in nature”. The values or ben-
efits were seen as inherent in the experience and there was no per-
ceived distance between participants and their experiences. It
therefore seemed difficult for participants to abstractedly talk
about it in terms of value. Axiomatic should here not be inter-
preted as meaningless or vacuous, but rather understood in terms
of, what is most obvious for the basis of experience is also most dif-
ficult to see and articulate. The notion of axiomatic value was pre-
sent throughout the discussions and can be seen as a repertoire
that inform the rest of the themes presented below.
3.2. Indivisibility
Descriptions of benefits of experiences were indivisible in the
sense that participants could not meaningfully break down the
descriptions into different features of value. Descriptions of beauty
and descriptions of sensory experiences were used in conjunction,
and often described as values in themselves. Hearing a bird singing
made several participants ‘‘really happy”, one participant said that
‘‘water is so relaxing. . .I don’t know why but seeing it is so relax-
ing”, and yet another that a scenic view ‘‘creates calm and har-
mony”. From the participants’ perspective, beauty, serenity or a
scenic view equaled value or wellbeing, and could not be broken
down to something else that further described how value is consti-
tuted. The indivisibility was also illustrated when participants
expressed their experiences, and values thereof, in terms of nostal-
gia and through nostalgic associations linked to specific places.
These stories commonly comprised nostalgic constructions of sen-
sory experiences describing how it looked, sounded, smelt and felt;
for example, the sound of the woodpecker and the smell of the
moss after a day of rain. Descriptions that drew on nostalgia were
also often emotional and associated with a specific landscape; the
participants talked about how they were touched, felt sad or were
in awe. These experiences were sometimes referred to as from
their childhood, associated with other people or family members
but also as experienced alone. The importance of knowing that a
native place is still there, even though they might not visit it was
also emphasized.
Participants frequently referred to ‘‘the forest” and ‘‘the ocean”
as symbolic and self-directed entities without referring to specific
places. This was sometimes mentioned in associations with folk-
lore and Swedish folk artists in the descriptions of positive images
of natural surroundings. Especially mentions of the forest were
often associated with a romanticized idea of folk mythology, i.e.
‘‘troll forest” trollskog. These perceptions can be seen as an example
of a cultural heritage and symbolic landscape memory where folk-
lore can have played an important role in shaping Swedish percep-
tions of nature and the forest. There was also a strong reference in
general to the idea of nature as a subject. Nature was often talked
about as a separate entity from civilization that operates through
an independent and directional natural force. Participants talked
about natures agency when describing how ‘‘nature is taking over”
in terms of spreading vegetation which was seen as positive and
 S. Stålhammar, E. Pedersen / Ecosystem Services 26 (2017) 1–9
when humans are not present ‘‘nature can grow and manage on its
own again”. Seeing nature as a subject relates to indivisibility since
it seems unfamiliar to divide a subject into parts.
3.3. Incommensurability
The participants were explicitly asked how the benefits of their
experiences could be valued, i.e. how it contributed to their quality
of life and how they thought that this should be measured. This
question allowed for deliberation on the appropriateness of valua-
tion and showed how participants thought about valuation of CES,
albeit implicitly. In general, the participants were puzzled when
confronted with these questions and responded to seeing the ben-
efits of nature in quantified terms as unthinkable. These findings
also show the inherent axiomatic characteristic of how partici-
pants saw the value of their experiences, and indicate that partic-
ipants did not have a clear formulation of how they saw the
benefits, which was explained partly because they take the value
for granted. This was explicitly expressed in one focus group; when
asked to deliberate on the value said that they think that they take
the value for granted, and therefore have difficulties thinking about
it in terms of value. The question of to what extent participants
saw their values of their experiences as replaceable by some other
experience was also discussed. There was general consensus that
the experience they get from nature could not be replaced by
something else, and can therefore be termed incommensurable.
Participants expressed that experiencing nature was something
unique and thought that since they had become used to it, they
could not imagine being without it.
3.4. The goodness of perceived naturalness
The participants often mentioned naturalness as a quality or
explanation to the perceived benefit of experiences. The experience
of naturalness when visiting non-human nature was described as
positive in itself, as well as the feeling of being away from the
unnatural civilization. A revealed contradiction in viewing benefits
in terms of naturalness was the fact that some participants also
described their preferences in terms of wanting a balance of cul-
tural and natural. They wanted natural environments to be ‘‘wild”
and feel authentic, but at the same time they wanted them to be
somewhat ordered and made accessible. Some described a semi-
controlled nature, or a ‘‘natural nature” but that was not too
unruly. As someone put it: ‘‘[the forest] should be a little planned,
but not artificial, still authentic”. Environments that were per-
ceived as natural were in general preferred, which was implicit
in the expression that something was beautiful, ‘‘even though it
is artificial”.
3.4.1. Nature as authentic
Participants described their identification with nature (as a sub-
ject) and, in relation to this expressed feelings of authenticity and
freedom. One participant described it as: ‘‘All of this that we see in
front of us now are things that we have constructed, I mean the
school and cities and those things, but when we get out in nature
that’s when we realize that this has been here all along, I mean. . .
it’s not we who have made it. . .that is also part of why you get so
fascinated and it’s like. . . wow.” When asked why they thought
that people can have such strong positive experiences from scenic
views of nature, one replied that: ‘‘humans were created in nature”
and ‘‘it’s kind of like coming home”, and ‘‘it is our place of origin”.
Most groups also discussed nature experiences as a basic human
‘‘need”, essential for their wellbeing. These views demonstrated a
discourse of identification, a sense of belonging and dependency
on nature. When probed about why or what was good about the
feeling of naturalness, it was described as giving rise to a sense
5
of authenticity, which was in itself beneficial or valuable and that
participants could identify with. Another frequent explanation or
characteristic related to the authenticity of nature was that experi-
ences give rise to ‘‘a sense of freedom”. One participant explained
this as: ‘‘you are more free where it is quiet”. When probed about
why the experience of walking in the city is different from in the
forest, one participant said that: ‘‘[In the city] it’s not the same
sense of freedom, by the ocean and the forest I feel a huge freedom
and I feel like I can breathe easier (. . .) but it is not the same feeling
when someone else has planned it, that has thought about what
fits best to plant here, some landscaper or something like that.
There are no landscapers in the forest”. There was thus a link in
the experience between connectedness or identification with nat-
ure, naturalness and a feeling of freedom.
3.4.2. Nature as healing
The idea of nature having healing properties was a commonly
expressed theme which was sometimes explicitly stated and
sometime implicit in the descriptions. These were interlinked with
aesthetic descriptions that showed a romantic view of nature.
When asked what participants get from visiting natural environ-
ments and what the motivation is to go there a common response
was to ‘‘recharge the brain”, i.e. to restore and to contemplate.
When asked why one participant feels better after walking on
the beach they said that ‘‘It cleanses. Many thoughts disappear,
or you can actually find new answers”. Another said that: ‘‘We
need the forest and nature. That is where you recharge. . . I think
it is important for a lot of people”. And: ‘‘You get elevated, like with
the blackbird. I know when I was sick, I had pneumonia and I was
on Gotland, but I heard the blackbird. This was actually a support.”.
In the descriptions about restoration and contemplation, natural
surroundings were often described as having healing powers or
properties. This was also taken for granted, or axiomatic, in the
sense that it did not seem to require explanation of why or how
the perceived restoration works. ‘‘It’s free therapy”. One participant
said: ‘‘nature is healing, isn’t it?” The idea of nature being healing
was also shown through the many references to how the experi-
ence in different ways is ‘‘good for the soul” or ‘‘a rest for the soul”.
3.4.3. Nature as beauty, magic and movement
The perceived naturalness or absence of humans was expressed
as an inherent part of the aesthetic experience and nature was in
general described as more beautiful if untouched by humans. The
beauty of nature was frequently explained as the benefit or value
of the experience, and when probed about how or why this is valu-
able, common responses were that it makes you feel good or calm,
or that it gives a sense of peace or wonder. The notion of nature
being magical was reoccurring. One group discussed water as hav-
ing ‘‘some kind of magical attraction” that is ‘‘not really possible to
define” but ‘‘there is something magical about it” and that ‘‘it’s
calming” and ‘‘it’s an element”. Fascination, perceived naturalness,
beauty and ‘‘the sense of nature being something bigger than
humans or civilization” were components that were explained as
giving rise to the magical feelings. A sense of wonder and awe were
also described when seeing wild nature, flowers and in experienc-
ing the changing seasons. The fact that the magic character of nat-
ure was understood as undetermined seemed to be of significance,
and can also be described through (the repertoire of) axiomatic
value. Descriptions of beauty were often associated with enjoying
the movement, variation and diversity of life in nature, as well as
to a general preference towards the presence of animals. A com-
mon expression was that they liked when ‘‘something is happen-
ing” in the environment around them in terms of movement,
variation and the presence of animals. The importance of the aes-
thetics and the affiliation with alive or growing life-forms was
sometimes expressed as more important than the perceived natu-
6 S. Stålhammar, E. Pedersen / Ecosystem Services 26 (2017) 1–9
ralness, as shown for example through the appreciation of
horticulture.
4. Discussion
Our most salient finding is that participants had difficulty
describing their experiences in terms of a benefit to their wellbeing
or as a value. Consequently, we want to raise a concern about the
general preoccupation with the attempt to fit the ways that the
natural environment matters to people into the concept and notion
of values. Our findings contradict the use of a cognitivist/cognitive
ontology, or interactional worldview (Altman and Rogoff, 1991) as
a starting point for valuation of CES, which involves a separation
between values and the object of value. As our findings demon-
strate, the participants’ articulations of benefits can be described
as axiomatic since they were in large implicit, taken for granted,
difficult to articulate, and indivisible. In general, participants’
descriptions of visiting nature to ‘‘recharging the brain” and relax
can be seen as in line with theories on restorative environments
(Kaplan, 1995; Ulrich et al., 1983). However, descriptions of
restoration, serenity or beauty could not be meaningfully broken
down to describe how participants valued the experiences. This
has implications for the consequentialist framing of ES valuation
and the idea of preference-based valuation. The direct sensory
experience was explained as inherently valuable to the partici-
pants, and they had difficulties extrapolating and labelling the
experience in terms of value in an instrumental way. These find-
ings are similar to those of Selman and Swanwick’s (2010) where
a recurrent theme was the intangibility of natural beauty and par-
ticipants’ need to ensure that it reflected non-quantifiable and
emotional qualities, which often could not be specified or defined,
but was related to the capacity of land and water to evoke emo-
tional responses.
It seems reasonable to question how value possibly can be
derived or captured through preference-based valuation methods
if it is experienced as axiomatic by individuals. The findings also
stand in contrast to the economic logic of intentionality which
takes preferences and expectations to be cognates for beliefs and
desires and assumes that preferences are ordered and transitive
in individuals minds (Rosenberg, 2001, p 183). The participants
viewed their experiences in nature as something unique and
incommensurable and the idea of quantifying benefits was incom-
patible with their views. These views are thus disparate to the idea
in preference-based valuation that natural capital is commensu-
rable, i.e. that values are equivalent to something else in monetary
or other terms, among themselves or as human-made and financial
resources (Pascual et al., 2010, p 11).
Our participants drew on nostalgia, memories and experiences
from their childhood and descriptions were associated with other
people or family members. These descriptions can be seen as piv-
otal or likened to what James (2015) refers to as constitutive value,
i.e. those values that play integral roles in people’s lives such as
someone’s native place. Within the CES valuation paradigm, such
values would possibly be interpreted in terms of a sense of place,
or as heritage values defined as ‘memories’ in the landscape from
past cultural ties (Church et al., 2011, p. 645). However, we argue
in accordance with James (2015) that when a place has constitutive
value it cannot accurately be conceived as sense of place or a her-
itage value because it decouples meaning from context and turns
into an instrumental representation. Our participants expressed
the importance of place as inherently interlinked with meaning,
personal memory and belonging which can be interpreted as form-
ing part of their identity. If something forms part of an individual’s
identity, it does not seem accurate to interpret this as an external
service to that person. We instead align with Fish et al. (2016), who
include identity as part of their novel framework for CES, demon-
strating that CES contribute to wellbeing through the identities
they help frame. They do not however give specific advice on
how identity should be captured. Some narrative-based
approaches that intend to elicit identity-related values can be
questioned. Posing questions such as: ‘‘Are there places that are
important to your sense of identity or the identity of the group
to which you see yourself as a member? (Satterfield et al., 2013.
p. 15)” are not capable of capturing values that individuals have
not previously articulated in form of identity. Furthermore, partic-
ipants’ also described an identification with the idea of nature (as a
subject) rather than identification with place. This aspect of iden-
tification has not, to our understanding, been explored in the sense
of place literature (Williams, 2014) and we want to add this as an
example of how identity can be substantialized by natural environ-
ments. Furthermore, the way that participants talked about nature
as a subject could be interpreted in terms of ‘personhood’ or ani-
mism in relational epistemology (Milton, 2002; Hornborg, 2006;
Ingold, 2006; Bird-David, 1999).
In general, a romantic view of nature characterized the group
discussions which is known to have been influential in Sweden
since the late 18th century (Jensen and Ouis, 2014). Some general
findings are in line with theories about restorative environments
such as the way participants described naturalness aligning with
preferences of perceived naturalness (e.g. Lindal and Hartig,
2015; Ode et al., 2009). Also, the descriptions of feelings of being
away from the unnatural civilization is in line with the sense of
being away in attention restoration theory (Kaplan and Kaplan,
1989). However, using an interpretivist perspective, we construe
the idea of naturalness and identification with nature in a different
way. Participants described their experiences through identifica-
tion with nature, naturalness, authenticity, and a sense of freedom.
We interpret the participants’ descriptions in similar ways as
Dovey (2000) who, from a phenomenological perspective, explains
the search for authenticity in the experience of the environment as
a search for a condition of connectedness in the person – environ-
ment relationships, of which authenticity is a property. Our partic-
ipants described how the undetermined character of nature
seemed to give rise to feelings of authenticity and connectedness
because there was something about this undetermined character
that they identified with. They also expressed feeling a sense of
freedom possibly because nature or the experience requires noth-
ing from them. Drenthen (2015) reporting on life story interviews
suggest that nature, as the realm of wildness, allows one to feel a
sense of autonomy and discover one’s self because of the indiffer-
ence of nature and lack of societal demands and norms. The unde-
termined character of how individuals see nature can thus be seen
as part of the benefit, and part of the sense of relief that arises from
the recreational experience. In that light, the pursuit of increas-
ingly attempting to separate and categorize benefits of experiences
in nature in line with CES appears contradictory to how individuals
perceive benefits of nature as undetermined.
The described healing capabilities of nature, and references to
the experiences being ‘‘good for the soul” show a longing for con-
nectedness. Nature connectedness has been extensively studied in
environmental psychology (Restall and Conrad, 2015; Capaldi
et al., 2014), but is not commonly discussed with regard to CES.
An interpretivist approach like ours could be used to help fill in
the gaps of understanding for example why patterns of recalled
connectedness differ from one environment to another. Further-
more, the desire for connectedness and emotional relationships
with nature can be interpreted in terms of spirituality (Tacey,
2000). With this view, fascination, perceived naturalness, beauty
and the undetermined character of nature that gives rise to magi-
cal feelings, can all be interpreted as related to spiritual experi-
ences. Gullestad (1992) describes how many Scandinavians
 S. Stålhammar, E. Pedersen / Ecosystem Services 26 (2017) 1–9
perceive experiences in nature as an almost spiritual experience
(see also Ween and Abram, 2009).
An interpretivist approach to understanding value is not
directly comparable with mainstream classification schemes for
CES, such as the European CICES (Haines-Young and Potschin,
2012). This classification scheme builds on itemized lists, which
do not make categories mutually exclusive, but incapable of
accounting for the relationship or composition of them. We oppose
the idea of stacking or bundling different classes to try to account
for relationships, since such a procedure would not provide the
depth, meaning and interconnectedness of the experience that
the participants themselves attribute to it. Using an interpretivist
approach, benefits seem best conceptualized as an entanglement
of all subcategories of CES in the CICES scheme. For example, CICES
has a separate class of ‘‘aesthetic”, where a sense of place is
included as an example. Seeing sense of place as a subcategory of
aesthetic values is misrepresentative if place-based values play
integral parts in people’s lives. The way that spirituality could be
interpreted as the expression of a desire for connectedness (with
nature) would also not be captured by the CICES classification. Fur-
thermore, as some of our findings suggest the possibility of a desire
for connectedness with nature being foundational for benefits of
(recreational) experiences in nature, then ‘connectedness’ cannot
be separated and accounted for or stacked next to other CES. Par-
ticipants descriptions cannot be meaningfully interpreted by iso-
lating for example aesthetic benefits on the one hand and
spiritual on the other, an thereby support Kenter et al. (2014)
who state that aesthetic and spiritual experiences can be seen as
co-emergent (see also Kenter et al., 2016b). In general, our findings
support the framework by Fish et al. (2016) who conceptualize ES
in terms of relational phenomena that continually enables and
shapes benefits (through identities, experiences and capabilities).
Exploring how these benefits mutually reinforce each other should
be encouraged rather than attempting to separate them artificially.
We want to emphasize the importance of emotion for interpret-
ing the value and meaning of experiences in nature. Our findings
align with those of Drenthen (2015) who through life history anal-
ysis report that people see nature not as an object of value, but
instead as a meaningful context that can be interpreted through
the Aristotelian concept of ‘eudaimonia’ (human flourishing).
Cooper et al. (2016) also use a conceptual analysis to show how
a range of different conceptions of aesthetic and spiritual values
are at axiological odds with consequentialism, since aesthetic
and spiritual interests often do not have an instrumental end,
can be experienced without preference satisfaction, and stem from
different ontological value relationships.
The distinction of instrumental and intrinsic value (Jax et al.,
2013) and preference-based valuation assumes that people’s
appreciation for nature translates into reasoning where value can
be allocated in logically coherent ways. The emotional characteris-
tic of experiences in nature is however something that has been
largely overlooked in valuation of ES. Rational justification rather
than emotional aspects of values of nature are of greatest concern
in dominant environmental ethics. If we, as Milton (2002) suggests,
instead see emotions as a significant part of how people value
things, we can interpret value as perceived meaning, which
becomes known through emotion and experienced as feelings.
Our findings suggest that in order for people’s descriptions of value
to bear the meaning that it has for them, value needs to be con-
nected to the sensory experiences and emotions that experiences
give rise to. An elicitation of CES value that does not take the emo-
tional component into account will be less meaningful. We wish to
add this consideration to the current development on ‘‘relational
value” (e.g. Chan et al., 2016; Díaz et al., 2015), and encourage
the exploration of how emotional aspects relates to the idea of
Eudaimonia. Eudaimonism bases virtues in human flourishing,
7
which also is equated with performing one’s distinctive function
of reasoning of a life ‘‘worth living” (Athanassoulis, (n.d.)). In order
to complement the idea of human flourishing with emotional
aspects, an exploration of (neo)entimentalism, which hold that
emotional responses determine what is valuable, could be fruitful
(McShane, 2011).
It should be emphasized that using an interpretivist method to
understand value that seems to align with a more relational per-
spective should not be equated with eliciting relational values.
Some of our findings seem to align with the idea of relational value
(Chan et al., 2016; Fish et al., 2016) in the sense that it emphasizes
the non-dualist and meaning-making aspects of how value was
seen by participants. However, it is unclear if this supposedly
new category of value is being consistently conceptualized, what
its ontological foundations are and how it relates to existing rela-
tional ontologies and epistemologies. Relationally understood
value is in a psychological sense for example best conceptualized
in terms of a transactional worldview (Altman and Rogoff, 1991).
Some novel contributions based on a ‘transactional’ worldview to
understand human-environmental relations have been suggested
by Cooke et al. (2016) and Raymond et al., 2014, who both use
an ‘embodied’ approach. However, these and other relational epis-
temologies, such as our reference to animism, cannot be expected
to be comparable or assumed to be compatible with the ecosystem
services framework. While some aspects could be analogous or
overlap, we espouse epistemological pluralism and call for the
need to clarify the ontology and epistemology of relational values
of ES.
5. Conclusions
There are elements of individuals’ direct experience, being and
knowing human-environmental relations that remain uncaptured
by ecosystem services valuation methods. Our interpretative
approach allowed us to find some aspects of expressed benefits
that are currently not taken into account in the conceptualization
of values. These expressions are characterized as being axiomatic,
indivisible, and incommensurable and include perceiving value
through emotions, connectedness, authenticity and spirituality.
These findings can be argued to provide leverage for resistance to
the entire idea of value elicitation. The basic argument for valua-
tion of ecosystem services is that we need to know how to make
trade-offs between different preferences for decision-making. As
our findings suggest however, all values cannot (ontologically) be
interpreted as preferences and be used to assess trade-offs without
losing their fundamental meaning because they are entangled and
co-emergent. Using an interpretivist approach to understand those
values seems most appropriate. Interpretative methods have been
suggested to be used alongside mainstream methods to provide a
more comprehensive valuation that not only considers how much
ES are worth but also what they mean to people (Kenter, 2016).
Our findings bring us to question this dichotomy of values versus
meanings and we instead suggest that benefits that humans reap
from nature should best be conceptualized in a way where mean-
ings can be interpreted as value. Overriding the fundamental
meaning of values would imply a risk of scientific imperialism
when applying certain framings of value that masks others. More
studies are needed that investigate the possibility of defining crit-
ical circumstances where meanings of experiences are lost through
conceptualization and valuation, as well as what the consequences
of this for different stakeholders are.
Our findings could also be considered to provide incentive for
developing novel ways to think about and conceptualize ontologies
and worldviews, and about how these appropriately could inform
decision-making. Attempting to more accurately describe and
8 S. Stålhammar, E. Pedersen / Ecosystem Services 26 (2017) 1–9
understand experiences of nature through qualitative social
science and interpretivist approaches will not easily or adequately
translate to robust indicators to inform policy and decision-
making. Despite the development of novel frameworks for ‘‘di-
verse” valuation that are supposed to include multiple and plural
values, it is uncertain how the three cultures of science, i.e. the nat-
ural science, quantitative social science and interpretivist tradi-
tions could be accurately reconciled to inform decision-making.
Practitioners need to be critical and reflexive about the ontological
and epistemological grounds of what types of values they intend to
capture in CES assessments and the difference between interpre-
tivist and positivist approaches should be highlighted. Moreover,
if we want to manage for more qualitative and plural values based
on relational worldviews, institutions need to be receptive and
adaptive to accommodate for these in their management frame-
works. Regardless of these challenges, there is great potential to
further theoretically and conceptually develop the understanding
of benefits of ecosystems to human society in ways that align with
the lived experience of people.
Acknowledgements
This study was funded by the Swedish Environmental Protec-
tion Agency (no. 13/148) and the Swedish Research Council Formas
(Linneus Centre LUCID; grant no. 259-2008-1718). We like to
thank the participants without whom this study would not have
been possible. We also like to thank editors and anonymous
reviewers for their insightful and generous comments.
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