Abstract
Characterizing ecosystem services demand (ESD) is key to understanding the diverse preferences for various benefits from nature. However, direct evidence of the variations in ESDs among different groups of people and places remains limited. Here, a national-scale dataset of ESDs derived from a non-probabilistic survey of 20,075 urban residents across 31 provinces in China is presented. The dataset captures preferences for nine typical urban ecosystem services using a point-allotment experiment, where participants allocated a total of 100 importance points to prioritize ESDs. Key findings reveal significant variations in ESDs, with air purification receiving the highest average importance point (22.17), followed by recreation (15.60) and local climate regulation (13.62). This pattern of variation in ESDs is evident in 28 of 31 provinces. The dataset also includes detailed socioeconomic and environmental metadata, enabling further analyses of regional disparities and their drivers among ESDs. This resource offers exploratory insights into tailoring urban design and ecosystem management strategies to diverse societal needs, thereby advancing sustainable land use planning and ESD research.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The full survey results, including the socioeconomic, personal, and ecosystem service demand data, are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17309624.
Code availability
The code for performing the Mann-Whitney U test, two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and visualization is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17309624. The code was edited using MATLAB 9.4 (R2018a).
References
Wolff, S., Schulp, C. J. E. & Verburg, P. H. Mapping ecosystem services demand: A review of current research and future perspectives. Ecol. Indic. 55, 159–171 (2015).
Wei, H. et al. Integrating supply and social demand in ecosystem services assessment: A review. Ecosyst. Serv. 25, 15–27 (2017).
Wolff, S., Schulp, C. J. E., Kastner, T. & Verburg, P. H. Quantifying Spatial Variation in Ecosystem Services Demand: A Global Mapping Approach. Ecol. Econ. 136, 14–29 (2017).
Cao, T., Yi, Y., Liu, H., Xu, Q. & Yang, Z. The relationship between ecosystem service supply and demand in plain areas undergoing urbanization: A case study of China’s Baiyangdian Basin. J. Environ. Manage. 289, 112492 (2021).
De Knegt, B., Lof, M. E., Le Clec’h, S. & Alkemade, R. Growing mismatches of supply and demand of ecosystem services in the Netherlands. J. Environ. Manage. 373, 123442 (2025).
Zhai, T. et al. Research on the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and driving mechanisms of supply–demand risks of ecosystem services in the yellow river basin integrating the hierarchy of needs theory. Ecol. Indic. 171, 113229 (2025).
Veerkamp, C. J. et al. A review of studies assessing ecosystem services provided by urban green and blue infrastructure. Ecosyst. Serv. 52, 101367 (2021).
Huang, M. et al. A review on the supply-demand relationship and spatial flows of ecosystem services. J. Resour. Ecol. 13, 925–935 (2022).
Ma, Y. & Yang, J. A review of methods for quantifying urban ecosystem services. Landsc. Urban Plan. 253, 105215 (2025).
Li, X. et al. Influence of urban forms on long-duration urban flooding: Laboratory experiments and computational analysis. J. Hydrol. 603, 127034 (2021).
Liang, Z. et al. The mediating effect of air pollution in the impacts of urban form on nighttime urban heat island intensity. Sustain. Cities Soc. 74, 102985 (2021).
Rega-Brodsky, C. C. et al. Urban biodiversity: State of the science and future directions. Urban Ecosyst. 25, 1083–1096 (2022).
Washbourne, C.-L., Goddard, M. A., Le Provost, G., Manning, D. A. C. & Manning, P. Trade-offs and synergies in the ecosystem service demand of urban brownfield stakeholders. Ecosyst. Serv. 42, 101074 (2020).
Chen, Y. Spatial patterns in ecosystem services supply and demand in the Jing-Jin-Ji region, China. J. Clean. Prod. (2022).
Jia, Q. Linking supply-demand balance of ecosystem services to identify ecological security patterns in urban agglomerations. Sustain. Cities Soc. (2023).
Wu, S., Li, D., Liu, L. & Zhang, Z. Revealing urban residents’ ecosystem service preferences in China: Evidence from a nationwide survey. Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17309624 (2025).
Ode Sang, Å. et al. Are path choices of people moving through urban green spaces explained by gender and age? Implications for planning and management. Urban For. Urban Green. 49, 126628 (2020).
Zhao, J., Aziz, F. A. & Ujang, N. Factors influencing the usage, restrictions, accessibility, and preference of urban neighborhood parks - A review of the empirical evidence. Urban For. Urban Green. 100, 128473 (2024).
Bakhtsiyarava, M. et al. Potential drivers of urban green space availability in Latin American cities. Nat. Cities 842–852 https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-024-00162-1 (2024).
Joshi, A., Kale, S., Chandel, S. & Pal, D. Likert Scale: Explored and Explained. Br. J. Appl. Sci. Technol. 7, 396–403 (2015).
Jaung, W., Carrasco, L. R., Shaikh, S. F. E. A., Tan, P. Y. & Richards, D. R. Temperature and air pollution reductions by urban green spaces are highly valued in a tropical city-state. Urban For. Urban Green. 55, 126827 (2020).
He, W. et al. Can ecosystem services supply match local residents’ perception: Linking macro-ESs and micro-individual perceptions in the Yellow River Basin. J. Environ. Manage. 374, 124116 (2025).
Khan, S. U. et al. Who cares and how much? Narrative for advances in aquatic ecosystem services through non-market valuation with spatial dimensions using a discrete choice experiment. J. Clean. Prod. 337, 130603 (2022).
Patrycja, P., Krzysztof, M., Marcin, M., Adam, I. & Piotr, M. Ranking ecosystem services delivered by trees in urban and rural areas. Ambio 51, 2043–2057 (2022).
Wang, J. et al. Acceptance of COVID-19 Vaccination during the COVID-19 Pandemic in China. Vaccines 8, 482 (2020).
Huang, G., Jiang, Y., Zhou, W., Pickett, S. T. A. & Fisher, B. The impact of air pollution on behavior changes and outdoor recreation in Chinese cities. Landsc. Urban Plan. 234, 104727 (2023).
Geng, G. et al. Efficacy of China’s clean air actions to tackle PM2.5 pollution between 2013 and 2020. Nat. Geosci. 17, 987–994 (2024).
Kang, J. et al. Wild food plants and fungi used in the mycophilous Tibetan community of Zhagana (Tewo County, Gansu, China). J. Ethnobiol. Ethnomedicine 12, 21 (2016).
Guo, C.-A. et al. An ethnobotanical study on wild plants used by Tibetan people in Gyirong Valley, Tibet, China. J. Ethnobiol. Ethnomedicine 18, 67 (2022).
Berger, V. W. & Zhou, Y. Kolmogorov–Smirnov Test: Overview. in Wiley StatsRef: Statistics Reference Online https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118445112.stat06558 (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2014).
Bai, Y. et al. Developing China’s Ecological Redline Policy using ecosystem services assessments for land use planning. Nat. Commun. 9, 3034 (2018).
Chen, J., Jiang, B., Bai, Y., Xu, X. & Alatalo, J. M. Quantifying ecosystem services supply and demand shortfalls and mismatches for management optimisation. Sci. Total Environ. 650, 1426–1439 (2019).
Chen, H., Yan, W., Li, Z., Wende, W. & Xiao, S. A framework for integrating ecosystem service provision and connectivity in ecological spatial networks: A case study of the Shanghai metropolitan area. Sustain. Cities Soc. 100, 105018 (2024).
Acknowledgements
We thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42501366, 42301344) and the Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (ZR2022QC253) for funding this study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no known competing interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Wu, S., Li, D., Liu, L. et al. Revealing urban residents’ ecosystem service preferences in China: Evidence from a nationwide survey. Sci Data (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06689-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06689-3
