Individual preferences regarding pesticide-free management of green-spaces: a discret choice experiment with French citizens.

To comply with the pesticide ban in effect in French urban green spaces (UGSs), managers have to modify their practices and organize the transition towards pesticide-free UGSs. Understanding citizens' preferences for UGSs whose characteristics are modified by the pesticide ban is a useful complement to technical research on alternatives to pesticides. We rely on a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) ran on-line on a representative sample of the French population to analyze preferences towards characteristics of direct interest for the users (visual aspect, recreational opportunities and information campaign on pesticide-free UGSs), as well as less visible characteristics such as the fauna abundance, the working conditions or the budget dedicated to the maintenance of such areas. We find that all chosen attributes have a significant impact on respondents' choice of UGS option. The results show the importance of accounting for participants' heterogeneity. All citizens largely devalue options with a major increase in budget. But preferences towards other attributes are shapped by visit frequency to UGSs. The natural visual aspect is prefered by most users compares to the controlled aspect, but it is even more true for frequent visitors. Visit frequency affects in particular preferences towards fauna abundance (only valued by those who frequently visit UGSs), information campaign (only valued by those who do not frequently visit UGSs) and budget dedicated to UGSs (accepted by frequent visitors, but only if it remains limited).