Household adoption of urban nature-based solutions
D.R. Meertens (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
T. Filatova – Mentor (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
N.Y. Aydin – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
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Abstract
An ever increasing share of the world population lives in urban areas. With this development the liveability of these places has never been more important. While these places have always been challenging to live in, the changing climate is putting even more strain on it. The city faces problems like heat islands (or heat management in general), water management issues, biodiversity loss, poor air quality and much more. A manner to combat these issues that has been gaining prevalence is urban nature-based solutions. These are interventions that primarily make use of natural systems, like urban forests, green streets, walls, roofs and corridors. While their implementation has shown great success it has been limited to spaces owned by public entities. Much of the urban space is privately owned preventing the widespread adoption of urban nature-based solutions and achieving their full potential. The approach taken by this research is to look specifically at urban nature-based solutions to be implemented by private households. It seeks to determine the influence of the attributes of urban NbS on the adoption likeliness. Using a conjoint experiment in a survey in the Netherlands the relative influence of environmental benefits, utilities bill savings (through added insulation value), capital expenditure and maintenance requirements on the adoption likeliness has been determined. The results show that capital expenditure is the most influential. It is followed by environmental benefits and costs savings, which are comparable. The least influential attribute is maintenance requirements. Observations also show that some significant differences in influence can be observed between different demographic groups. The absolute influence of attributes on the adoption likeliness, in general, is quite limited. The next steps that can be taken are research into other factors that might contribute more to the adoption likeliness and making use of the findings in this research to formulate policy that properly stimulates the adoption of urban nature-based solutions by households.