Spatially contextualizing the social acceptability of nature restoration

Despite the critical importance of ecosystem restoration across Europe, comprehensive, ecosystem-specific assessments of community attitudes toward restoration efforts, measured in terms of social acceptance, remain scarce. This study spatially assesses social acceptance across ecosystem types. An online public participatory GIS (PPGIS) survey collected data from over 4,500 residents in the Copenhagen capital region, Denmark, revealing attitudes toward restoring nature across five ecosystem types and documenting their specific values, outdoor recreation uses, and perceived barriers to acceptance. Social acceptance was moderate to high overall but varied significantly across ecosystems: coastal, freshwater, and field ecosystems received higher acceptance, whereas forest and urban ecosystems showed lower support. Importantly, acceptance was positively associated with intrinsic, aesthetic, and regulating values, as well as activities such as relaxation, swimming, hiking, and picnicking, while sites used for mountain biking, horseback riding, and dog walking showed lower acceptance. Key self-reported reasons for low acceptance included concerns about access restrictions, risks and trade-offs, perceived ineffectiveness of measures, and threats to cultural heritage. These findings highlight the need for place-specific and ecosystem-sensitive social acceptability assessments in landscape planning and management for nature restoration and demonstrate how participatory mapping can help anticipate local opposition and contested views. • Participatory mapping used to assess acceptance for nature restoration spatially • Overall medium to high levels of acceptance, with variation across ecosystems • We identify areas of high acceptance and areas where more efforts are needed • Areas for horseback riding and mountain biking had lowest acceptance • Perceived reduced access, risks, and other trade-offs hindered acceptance