Rethinking ecosystem service trade-offs through perceived synergies and prioritisation: evidence from Haizhu National Wetland Park

Context Multifunctional urban nature areas conserve biodiversity while delivering cultural ecosystem services (ESs), yet intensive use can create conflicts between them. While most studies address trade-offs at broader landscape scales, less is known about perceptions at the meso-scale, where people directly experience them. Such perceptions are key for aligning conservation with public values. Objectives This study aims to examine how visitors perceive trade-offs and synergies among biodiversity, aesthetics, and recreation in a multifunctional wetland park. It further seeks to advance understanding of ES interactions by complementing scale perspectives and rethinking trade-offs through public perceptions. Methods Haizhu National Wetland Park, the public-accessible part of the Ramsar-listed Haizhu Wetlands in Guangzhou, China, was selected as a case study for its ecological value and intensive visitation. Visitor perceptions were assessed through discrete choice experiments, participatory mapping, and interviews. Results A biodiversity-sensitive subgroup (17%) benefits from biodiversity gains and is harmed by losses, while others are more sensitive to costs or aesthetics and may tolerate biodiversity decline if scenic quality is preserved. Scenarios expanding recreation while degrading both biodiversity and aesthetics consistently reduce welfare. Strong synergies between aesthetics and biodiversity or recreation suggest that aesthetics may act as a mediator, enabling improvements in aesthetics and biodiversity to sustain overall welfare without enhancing recreation at the expense of biodiversity. Conclusions The findings suggest that prioritising biodiversity-sensitive, aesthetically enriched habitats may yield greater welfare gains than enhancing all services equally and underscore the importance of incorporating heterogeneous human preferences regarding ES relationships into urban nature conservation.