Wildly diverse: How Europeans vary in their views on forest landscapes

The recent decade has seen academic and policy initiatives aiming to restore European nature and forests. Whether this caters to what Europeans expect and prefer has not been studied on a continental scale. Using a representative pan-European survey, this study assesses the importance people place on Forest Ecosystem Services (FES) and their landscape preferences, the latter drawing on a small series of illustrations representing a gradient from a wild to a more cultivated forest landscape. Our results show that beauty is a highly valued ecosystem service across the board, yet perceptions on what constitutes an attractive landscape vary. Based on the appreciation of the landscape drawings, over half of respondents prefer wilder surroundings, but preferences differ along socio-demographic and regional lines: Younger, female, and urban respondents favoured images showing cultivated landscapes relatively more when compared with older, male, and rural people showing relatively higher preferences for wilder landscape drawings. Geographically, Northern-Central Europeans generally preferred wilder landscapes more than South-Eastern Europeans, albeit with some outliers. This may be linked to cultural differences in nature perception, but also social and economic realities such as land abandonment and the importance of provisioning FES. These insights stress the need for EU policies, including the EU Nature Restoration Law, to consider the diversity in forest landscape preferences across the continent and respect varied social and regional preferences in forest restoration and rewilding initiatives.