There is increasing policy interest in valuing a broader range of ecosystem services in environmental management. Engagement of local people in ecosystem management is fundamental to making operational approaches viable. Development of decision support systems capable of operating in complex, data sparse non-linear multi-component systems is challenging. This thesis explores approaches for spatially explicit support of negotiation of land use change to manage ecosystem service provision across a range of ecosystem services. Initial research on the impacts of farmer interventions on ecosystem service provision in the Pontbren Catchment in mid Wales were used to identify operational requirements and knowledge gaps. Initial findings highlighted the importance of taking a spatially explicit approach and revealed significant gaps in data to inform decision making at local levels. Research revealed that local stakeholder's ecological knowledge suggested significant complementarities with scientific understanding of ecosystem function in the catchment that was useful for addressing data gaps and for validation of high resolution spatial datasets. Existing approaches for mapping ecosystem services were then reviewed to explore the extent to which they could be used to inform on the ground decision making. This revealed significant gaps in relation to mapping flows of ecosystem services and for informing decision making at finer scales. An iterative process was used to develop specifications for spatial tools focused at field, farm and immediate landscape scales connecting field level decisions about land use change (e.g. addition or removal of tree cover) with impacts on landscape scale processes (e.g. flood risk and habitat networks). The approach was then tested and adjusted following a scoping study in the Elwy catchment. The specifications resulted in Polyscape, a participatory methodology and geographic information system (GIS) mapping tool which integrates the knowledge of local and technical experts with readily available spatial environmental data to facilitate negotiation of land use change to manage ecosystem service provision. Polyscape offers a means for prioritising existing features and identification of opportunities for land use change to improve ecosystem service provision. It meets a key need for models and visualisations that it can be widely applied as it uses readily available data for parameterisation. Deficiencies in the data can be reduced by incorporating local stakeholder knowledge (which, in turn, increases stakeholder participation in the negotiation process). The Polyscape approach was applied in the Cambrian Mountains where output was evaluated by a range of local stakeholders (including farmers and ecologists). The feedback suggested that the approach delivered credible results at local landscape scales and provided a reasonable basis for the negotiation of ecosystem service provision. Requirements for implementing policy at local scales for effective ecosystem management were identified. Achieving this would require decentralised and integrated governance structures amongst agencies and training in participatory methodology. Polyscape provides a tangible framework for doing this.

This thesis consists of a portfolio of research papers examining key contemporary technical, methodological and policy issues on the use of non-market valuation in environmental decision-making. The introductory chapter provides a short discussion of the structure and general aims of the thesis. The rest of the thesis is divided into two parts. Part A (consisting of Chapters 2,3, and 4) contributes to the literature on the analysis and design of the two most commonly used stated preference methods, Contingent Valuation (CV) and Choice Modelling (CM). Chapter 2 examines the impacts of using alternative opt-out formats in CM studies, Chapter 3 presents a latent segmentation model as an alternative means of accounting for preference heterogeneity in discrete choice random utility models, while Chapter 4 introduces a generalised limited dependent variable modelling approach to account for non-trivial number of zero responses in open-ended type willingness to pay CV data. Part B (consisting of Chapters 5 and 6) contributes to the literature on the role of stated preferences in environmental policy and legal decisionmaking. Chapter 5 uses the CV method to examine the nature of wildlife values in the face of the ongoing policy debate between ex situ and in situ conservation. Lastly Chapter 6 seeks to assess the US experience with using non-market valuation in courts with the aim of providing suggestions as European legislators formulate the direction of the new EU environmental liability regime.

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Conservation depends heavily on protected areas, and many of these must be intensively managed in order to maintain important habitats and species. However, few conservation actions can be properly described as evidence-based, and knowledge of the effects of different types of management is necessary to improve conservation success. The New Forest National Park, Hampshire, UK, has been subject to intensive management which has not been scientifically investigated. In this thesis I assess management and monitoring effectiveness within two important open habitats: valley mires and heathlands. Research aims are to determine the impact that long term management (including differences between cutting and burning) has had on heathland communities in the New Forest, uncover the effects of restoration programmes on both biotic and abiotic components of valley mires, and to identify whether the current monitoring practice through Common Standards Monitoring (CSM) can detect changes in both habitats and serve as a basis for adaptive management. Data were collected in the field for both heathland and mire habitats using space-for-time substitutions, where sites of different ages since management intervention were compared. The plant community and soil chemical properties were assessed using randomly distributed quadrats within plots set up at each site location. A total of 30 heathland plots and 60 mire plots were established. Results showed that different heathland management resulted in great differences in the vegetation community, but with few changes as sites aged following management. The block nature of both management activities resulted in relatively uniform ericaceous age-structures within individual sites, and particularly low species diversity was recorded for burnt sites. CSM in heathland habitats is was poor at detecting changes in the habitats, but attribute sub-scores did demonstrate some differences. Analyses of mire restorations showed mixed results with abiotic conditions showing almost no changes between degraded and restored areas. Some minor differences emerged in the vegetation community, such as a decrease in Carex panicea following restoration and an increase in some Sphagnum species, such as S. papillosum. This work suggests that restoration has largely failed to achieve its goals. Techniques from the established monitoring program failed to show any changes following restoration and lacked the precision that detailed quantitative surveys showed. It was highly ineffective as a tool to monitor restoration work, calling into question its widespread use for such tasks in the New Forest. Current monitoring must be improved substantially if a move to effective and adaptive management is to be achieved.

This thesis makes a first attempt to operationalize the safe operating space concept at regional scale by considering the dynamic relationships between social and ecological systems. Time series data for a range of ecosystem services (ES) and human wellbeing (HWB) are analysed to understand the co-evolution (trends, change points, slow and fast variables and drivers) of the Bangladesh delta social-ecological system (SES). The linkages between ES and HWB are analysed using regression models (GAM, linear and logistic) to develop a system model, which is used in a system dynamic (SD) model to demonstrate the safe operating space for the SES in the Bangladesh delta. I employ the model to explore eight ‘what if’ scenarios based on well-known challenges (e.g. climate change) and current policy debates (e.g. subsidy withdrawals). Since the 1980s, HWB has improved in the Bangladesh delta mirroring rising levels of food and inland fish production. In contrast, ES have deteriorated since the 1960s in terms of water availability, water quality and land stability in the Bangladesh delta. The overall results suggest that material well-being (basic materials for a good life) have a strong relationship with provisioning services, which in turn, show a weak relationship with the quality of life (security and health). The SD model suggests that the Bangladesh delta may move beyond a safe operating space when a withdrawal of a 50% subsidy for agriculture is combined with the effects of a 2 oC temperature increase and sea level rise. Further reductions in upstream river discharge in the Ganges would push the system towards a dangerous zone once a 3.5 oC temperature increase was reached. The social-ecological system in the Bangladesh delta may be operated within a safe space by: 1) managing feedback (e.g. by reducing production costs) and the slow biophysical variables (e.g. temperature, rainfall) to increase long-term resilience, 2) negotiating for transboundary water resources and 3) also possibly by revising the global policy (e.g. withdrawal of subsidy) to implement at regional scale. This study demonstrates how the concepts of tipping points, limits to adaptations and boundaries for sustainable development may be defined in real world social-ecological systems.

The process of urbanisation has resulted in the degradation of the ecosystem services provided by the natural environment within cities. Conserving and enhancing these ecosystem services improves the sustainability of cities, and the health and wellbeing of those living and working in urban areas. Although many methods exist to quantify ecosystem services, these are based on placing economic value on an environmental commodity; a technique which has been highly criticised. Previous studies on ecosystem services have generally focused at landscape and global scales, failing to appreciate the provision at local scales. The research reported in this thesis focuses on the provision of nine ecosystem services of importance to urban environments (aesthetic, recreation, spiritual, climate change adaptation and mitigation, air quality control, water flow regulation, biodiversity, pollination, and noise buffering services), and has created a new analytical tool to quantify them in non-economic terms at the local scale. The tool was applied to 69 sites of 0.25km2 along a rural-urban gradient within the Greater Manchester conurbation. The results revealed that not all the ecosystem services studied were positively correlated with the amount of impermeable land cover as predicted from a consideration of previous studies. In addition, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was carried out to establish which ecosystem services could exist together at high quality within any given site, and which would need to be traded off. PCA revealed two scenarios, accounting for 48% and ^ 23% of events within sites of 0.25km . The outputs of this study could have applications within the planning process, allowing practitioners to focus on enhancing services which can exist synergistically within a given site, thereby increasing the effectiveness of ecosystem service provision within urban areas and benefiting the health and wellbeing of urban inhabitants.

Many conservation interventions aim to influence people's behaviour. Success depends upon a proper understanding of what motivates behaviour. I begin by reviewing social psychological models of behaviour, discussing how social psychological predictors of behaviour have been studied within conservation. Many studies focus on general attitudes towards conservation, rather than attitudes towards specific behaviours impacting on conservation success, assuming general attitudes are a useful indicator of behaviour, despite mixed evidence. Interventions depending upon rules require information about the quantity of people, and the types of people, breaking rules. However, when the subject of investigation is sensitive because it is illegal or socially taboo, it is naive to expect that people will respond honestly to questions about rule breaking when asked directly. Specialised methods exist for investigating sensitive topics yet are rarely used within conservation. I provide evidence that the randomised response technique (RRT) produces more accurate estimates of illicit behaviours compared to conventional surveys. Further, I show that RRT can be adapted to investigate how non-sensitive social psychological characteristics of respondents, such as their attitudes towards specific conservation-related behaviours, can be linked to their behaviour. This paves the way for using RRT to test the effectiveness of innocuous questions as proxy indicators for people's involvement in illicit behaviours. There has been concern that sanctions for wildlife crimes do not reflect how serious crimes are in terms of illegal profits or the threat status of targeted species. Sanctions should reflect how serious a crime is, whilst being socially acceptable. I use conjoint analysis to understand public and professional opinions as to which aspects of wildlife crimes make them more or less serious, and so deserving of a greater or lesser sentence. Results highlight the gravity judiciaries place on illegal profits when setting sentences. Finally, to understand how sanctions relate to species threat status, I analyse 23 years of wildlife crime sanctioning from the United Kingdom providing evidence that sanction severity increases with threat status and corresponding legal protection. This thesis is an example of how expanding our knowledge beyond traditional academic boundaries can enhance the development of conservation science.

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This study analyses socio-economic conditions and patterns of natural resource use in communities of the Andean Mountains of Northwest Argentina. It examines the impacts of protected area creation and the application of neoliberal development policy, which has become common across most of Latin America in recent decades, on two villages in Jujuy Province neighbouring Calilegua National Park. Using a political ecology framework to examine fieldwork and interview-based research, the study investigates the nature of factors influencing rural livelihoods in the region, both proximate and distant. The use of formal interviews and a case study to match rhetoric to practice uncovers deficiencies of the national protected areas system in Argentina. The example illustrates the pervasiveness of misanthropic, preservationist models rather than demonstrate the widespread adoption of people-oriented approaches to conservation. In common with many protected areas in South America, the creation of Calilegua National Park resulted in the displacement of tenant farmers, which has contributed to the reduced viability of traditional pastoral activity as a livelihood within the market system. Traditional agriculture retains an important role however, and the study reveals the diversity and dynamism of socio-economic activities and identities in rural areas of Latin America, rendering problematic assumptions of homogeneity commonly made by distant policy-makers. The increased prevalence of local waged employment has been aided by government schemes and has led to the emergence of newly configured networks of political clientalism at the village level based on asymmetrical relationships of reciprocity. This presents a paradoxical increase in the influence of the state within a development model that stresses reliance on market mechanisms and the withdrawal of government. Commonly acknowledged in the shantytowns of the city but largely unexplored in their contemporary rural context, these relationships are considered to threaten future sustainable economic and political development in marginal rural areas.

Environmental volunteering, such as biodiversity monitoring and practical conservation volunteering, provides a unique opportunity for achieving positive outcomes for both volunteers and conservation. While the social sciences have focussed on motivation, well- being and health benefits for volunteers, the environmental sciences have focussed on conservation outcomes. However, these parallel research agendas must be merged into a multidisciplinary, holistic approach to fully comprehend the complexities of the volunteering process and optimise outcomes. This thesis provides a first step in this direction by drawing together and extending research across psychology, health and conservation with the aim of investigating the relationships between environmental volunteer motivation, volunteer well- being and conservation achievement as perceived and experienced by volunteers and volunteer managers. Data collected from UK onsite and worldwide online surveys of nature- based activity participants, volunteers and volunteer managers are used to investigate these relationships. This thesis uncovers hitherto unknown discrepancies between perception and reality by volunteers and managers of volunteer motivation, well-being and conservation achievement. Environmental volunteers have a hierarchy of motivations, with value-based motives and desire to learn and be outdoors being more important, that was not recognised by volunteer managers. Similarly, volunteer managers underestimated the positive effect volunteering had on volunteers’ well-being. Interestingly, volunteers and managers rated the same conservation achievements differently, highlighting the need to develop and communicate more objective measures. Volunteers and managers both perceived that more motivated volunteers with higher levels of well-being would lead to increased conservation achievement, but this research found no such direct link between volunteer motivation and well-being and conservation achievement. This surprising result may be due to a shift in environmental volunteering towards a more experience-focused pattern of engagement. Volunteers, though interested in conservation, now also expect personal benefits from their volunteering, without which they leave. The implications of this change is that managers need to understand their volunteers’ motivations and well-being better to create fulfilling experiences where not only conservation, but also the volunteering experience itself, is at the centre.