Researchers have long struggled to design surveys that collect
detailed and informative data without introducing bias through the use
of loaded, confusing, or restrictive wording. A team of French
researchers has come up with a novel solution to this problem: Toss out
the surveys altogether, and replace them with a virtual computer program
that allows respondents to express their thoughts and preferences in
actions rather than in words.
This is the idea behind
Virtual Garden, a program that allows users to select from 95 different
features in order to create their ideal garden. The features fall within
seven different categories: animals, flowers, lawn and cover, sport and
playing, trees and bushes, water, and other. The program keeps track of
each item that is added and adjusted, and calculates biodiversity as
biotic features are introduced into the virtual habitat. Users are able
to view the garden from multiple angles and even take a virtual stroll
through the area in order to evaluate their progress and determine
whether further manipulations need to be made to the environment.
Far
from being merely a nerdy new version of The Sims, the program was
designed to assess which features people most want to experience when
they visit public gardens. Further, an analysis of the virtual habitats
could help clarify the role that biodiversity has in driving humans’
overwhelmingly positive responses to green spaces–particularly those
located in otherwise urban areas. Finally, by collecting basic social,
economic, and demographic information about each program user, the
program’s developers can also assess whether habitat preferences are
influenced by age, education, income, and general interest in the
natural environment.
The research team responsible for
Virtual Garden trialled the program among 732 Parisian hospital
patients. Each individual was given a 30-minute time limit for designing
the garden, though the average length of time required was only 19.2
minutes. Gardens typically contained approximately 24 different
features–9 “objects” (such as ponds), 5 animals, 8 flowers, and 5 woody
species (trees or bushes). Overall, users included fewer biotic
features than were expected by chance. Animals were particularly
underrepresented, with nearly a third of gardens containing no animals
at all, and almost another third containing fewer than 5 animal species.
Larger animals–especially mammals and herptiles–were not very
popular; the least preferred species overall were foxes and chimpanzees.
Ladybugs, peacocks, and great tits, on the other hand, were the most
preferred. The most popular species were generally those that are common
in Parisian gardens, suggesting that patients tended to populate their
virtual gardens with species that are most familiar to them.
Several
demographic and socioeconomic factors influenced garden design. For
example, men included fewer animals and flowers than women; younger
patients included more non-native species; and people who showed a
greater interest in conservation and nature activities tended to create
gardens with higher biodiveristy. Interestingly, plant richness was
higher in gardens created by people who grew up in more rural areas,
again suggesting that familiarity with species is an important driver of
habitat preferences.
The Virtual Garden trial produced
two main results. First, it suggests that computer programs may be a
useful way to collect data from people without accidentally introducing
bias into a study. Such programs are likely to be particularly useful in
situations where researchers need to address or describe situations
that are highly visual in nature–such as habitat structure, the
aesthetics of which can greatly influence respondents’ attitudes and
opinions. Second, the patterns reported here get us one step closer to
understanding city-dwellers’ complex and often contradictory responses
to green spaces. There is particularly strong evidence of an
“extinction-of-experience” process, whereby people judge biodiversity
and aesthetics according to what they have previously experienced,
rather than what may be natural, healthy, and/or desirable in a given
environment.
The
creators of the Virtual Garden hope that conservationists and managers
can use their program to collect and compare data from across a wide
geographic range, and, therefore, to improve our “understanding of the
role culture and living context…play in people’s relations with
biodiversity.” This could not only help save threatened species, but
also improve the well-being of people by increasing and improving
human-nature interactions even in the most urban of environments.
—
Shwartz, A., Cheval, H., Simon, L., and Julliard, R. 2013. Virtual Garden computer program for use in exploring the elements of biodiversity people want in cities. Conservation Biology 27(4):876-886.
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