Species richness alone does not predict cultural ecosystem service value

Abstract Many biodiversity-ecosystem services studies omit cultural ecosystem services (CES) or use species richnessas a proxy and assume that more species confer greater CES value. We studied wildflowerviewing, a key biodiversity-based CES in amenity-based landscapes, in Southern Appalachian Mountain forests and asked (i) How do aesthetic preferences for wildflowercommunities vary with components of biodiversity, including species richness?; (ii) How do aesthetic preferences for wildflowercommunities vary across psychographicgroups?; and (iii) How well does species richnessperform as an indicator of CES value compared with revealed social preferencesfor wildflowercommunities? Public forest visitors (n = 293) were surveyed during the summer of 2015 and asked to choose among images of wildflowercommunities in which flower species richness, flower abundance, species evenness, color diversity, and presence of charismatic species had been digitally manipulated. Aesthetic preferences among images were unrelated to species richnessbut increased with more abundant flowers, greater species evenness, and greater color diversity. Aesthetic preferences were consistent across psychographicgroups and unaffected by knowledge of local flora or value placed on wildflowerviewing. When actual wildflowercommunities (n = 54) were ranked based on empirically measuredflower species richnessor wildflowerviewing utility based on multinomial logit models of revealed preferences, rankings were broadly similar. However, designation of hotspots (CES values above the median) based on species richnessalone missed 27% of wildflowerviewing utility hotspots. Thus, conservation priorities for sustaining CES should incorporate social preferencesand consider multiple dimensions of biodiversity that underpin CES supply.