Fostering Cultural Ecosystem Services: The Impact of Social Media and Online Intermediaries in Promoting Payment for Ecosystem Services

Cultural ecosystem services, encompassing intangible benefits like spiritual enrichment, cognitive development, and aesthetic experiences, play a crucial role in enhancing individual well-being. Despite their profound impact, these services often face limited economic recognition and marketability, highlighting the importance of improved acknowledgment in future ecosystem assessments. The emergence of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) as a market-based mechanism offers compensation to landowners for managing their land to deliver various ecosystem services.

While PES provides incentives for conservation, challenges such as the lack of market information, participation avoidance, and mistrust hinder its widespread adoption, especially concerning the physical, emotional, and mental benefits derived from ecosystem services. Bridging this gap requires a focus on education and outreach, emphasizing not only the provisioning and regulating ecosystem services but also the cultural ones. PES programs, being information-intensive, demand a comprehensive understanding of ecosystem services and their management impacts.

To address these challenges, we propose leveraging social media, specifically through local social media influencers (LSMIs), as online intermediaries in PES initiatives. In the modern world, social media has proven to be a potent solution for boosting awareness, trust, and promotion for various businesses, making it a viable avenue for PES. Unlike traditional offline intermediaries, LSMIs on social media platforms can effectively engage with local communities, fostering awareness and trust-building.

Our research focuses on the European context, exploring the role of LSMIs in the preparatory phase of PES programs. Through a literature review, we identified a framework of potential key indicators of social media (SM) and LSMIs. To gain comprehensive perspectives from PES buyers and sellers in online social networks, we conducted a survey involving three PES case studies in Spain, France, and Austria.

The findings underscore YouTube and Instagram's popularity as the preferred social media platforms among both buyers and sellers of ecosystem services within the cultural context. Photos and videos emerged as captivating mediums, with more than 50% expressing the affirmative impact of this contemporary tool in advancing cultural ecosystem services. Geographically, Spain led in leveraging social media for the promotion of cultural ecosystem services, followed by France and Austria.

By understanding the dynamics between LSMIs, social media platforms, and PES initiation, our research contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of social media's role in promoting ecosystem services and sustainable environmental practices.