Agent-based Modelling and Social Theory Reveal How People Change Their Yards in Response to Wildlife

Residential yards and gardens provide a multitude of benefits for people, including green infrastructure, access to nature, and improved mental health. Yards can also benefit wildlife by providing habitat, food and other resources. Previous studies have shown that people manage their gardens in different ways to attract or deter wildlife and that visible wildlife diversity can increase people’s investment in nature and resource provisioning. These relationships between people and wildlife could form feedbacks with long-term consequences for biodiversity, but the way that wildlife presence in residential gardens affects people’s management ecisions remains largely unexplored. To understand how these relationships shape yard management decisions and the ecological outcomes of these feedback loops over time, we 1) conducted a systematic literature review focused on the interconnections of residents’ yard management decisions and their observations of wildlife in their yards and gardens and 2) conducted experiments with Noticing Birds, an agent-based model (ABM) simulating a socio-ecological system of urban yards, residents, and bird populations. We organized the literature with a framework based on the Theory of Planned Behavior and found that current studies in this field are overwhelmingly focused on surveying peoples’ attitudes which, while useful, do not fully explain wildlife gardening behavior. Our experiments with Noticing Birds revealed two types of yards emerge with disparate ecological outcomes as a result of the noticing nature cycle and the extinction of experience. Finally, we were able to predict the future aggregate vegetation of yards based on the trajectory of their vegetation changes over a 5-year period. We suggest that future studies incorporate investigations of people’s wildlife observations and are conducted longitudinally to incorporate feedback loops. Furthermore, our proposed TPB framework and the Noticing Birds ABM can be useful tools to answer questions about people’s interactions with wildlife in yards, informing conservation strategy in urban residential yards.

Author dc:creator

• Nikolas Ballut (24399389)

• Urban Ecology
• Behavioral Theory
• Agent-based Modelling

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.25417/uic.32993810.v1

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:figshare.com:article/32993810