Journal
AMBIO
Volume 51, Issue 5, Pages 1168-1178Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s13280-021-01648-1
Keywords
Edible city; Nature connectedness; Provisioning ecosystem services; Urban food forestry; Urban non-timber forest product; Wild plant gathering
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Funding
- City of Vienna Jubilee Funds for the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna
- University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU)
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The study found that many urban residents have experience with foraging wild foods, with frequency of foraging related to plant species and forms. Those who foraged more frequently had greater nature relatedness, more childhood foraging experiences, and lived on the outskirts of the city.
Meaningful human-nature interactions can counteract the extinction of experience and positively influence people's nature relatedness, health and wellbeing. In this study, we explored urban wild food foraging to understand how best to enable human-nature interactions in cities by means of foraging. Using a structured questionnaire, a total of 458 residents of Vienna, Austria were surveyed. Sixty-four percent of visitors of public urban green spaces previously foraged for wild food species, whereas foraging frequencies were related to the targeted plant species and their life forms. People who foraged more frequently had greater nature relatedness, more childhood foraging experiences and lived on the outskirts of the city, but their socio-demographic backgrounds were heterogeneous. Social acceptance and lack of access to wild foods were perceived to be barriers. To promote nature relatedness through urban foraging, the legal framework, access to low-contamination foraging areas, availability of wild foods and social acceptance need to be improved.
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