Sociocultural valuation of ecosystem services in protected areas: A study applied to Southeast Spain

Research background: Protected areas (PAs) play a fundamental role in the maintenance of ecosystem processes and in the flow of ecosystem services (ESs) they provide. However, the management of PAs is complex due to the existence of different stakeholders with disparate and, often, opposed preferences and valuations. The sociocultural assessment of ESs contributes to optimizing the management of scarce resources based on the preferences of the different stakeholders, taking into account the economic, environmental and social dimensions of Purpose of the article: In this work, a sociocultural assessment of the ESs provided by a PA in this PA are and to establish their degree of importance for all the stakeholders involved.