Scottish Natural Capital Accounts: 2020

7. Cultural services

This section presents some of the cultural services that nature provides to humanity. Cultural services are the non-material uses and experiences people have in the natural environment. They include recreation, education, art, sense of place and spirituality.

Here we show estimates for both the recreational and aesthetic benefits. Recreation accounted for 70% (£567 million) of the total valuation of cultural services in 2016. Recreation is the dominant cultural service over the time period seen in Figure 36, equating to an average of around £610.4 million over the time series. As well as measuring recreation by looking at surveys we also capture recreational and aesthetic values in the housing market by looking at the willingness to pay for living close to, and having views of, green and blue space (any open water).

Source: Office for National Statistics, Scottish Recreation Survey, and Scotland's People and Nature Survey

The total cultural service valuation in Scotland has decreased by 22.9% between the high recorded in 2011, and 2016, whilst the rest of the UK increased by 1% during the same period. Despite the increase in the number of visits occurring in Scotland, the value decline seen in Figure 36 is because of falling spending per visit. Between 2010 and 2016, cultural services in Scotland made up on average 8% of the UK total cultural services.

Source: Office for National Statistics, Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment (MENE) survey, The Welsh Outdoor Recreation Survey, Scottish Recreation Survey, and Scotland's People and Nature Survey

Recreation

During 2017, people in Scotland spent more time on outdoor recreation than previously seen. On average Scottish people took 29 more visits than people across the UK during 2017. People in Scotland also spent 39 more hours on outdoor recreation while expenditure per year was £50 less.

In 2017, over 1 billion hours were spent on Scottish outdoor recreation (including travel time). Time spent in Scotland's natural environment has increased since 2012, following a decline in hours spent in all Scottish habitat areas except woodland, between 2011 and 2012 (see Figure 38). The Scottish Recreation Survey summary report (PDF, 1.51MB) suggests that this may have been because of poor weather. The estimated number of visits to the Scottish outdoors was 25% lower during the summer months of 2012, compared with 2011.

Estimates of outdoor recreation refer to people aged 16 years and over and excludes overnight and tourist visits.

Source: Office for National Statistics and Scottish Natural Heritage

Between 2009 and 2017, the average length of an outdoor recreation visit in Scotland was two hours and seven minutes. One hour and 19 minutes was spent at the visit destination and 47 minutes was spent on travel to and from the visit destination. For some visitors travel time could be part of the enjoyment from nature, which is shown in their choice of route or travel method. For others it may represent a willingness to pay or a cost of accessing outdoor recreation.

Visits to urban outdoor areas (such as local parks and open spaces) made up the largest proportion of time spent. Between 2009 and 2017, 39% of time spent on outdoor recreation was in these areas. Scottish people visited urban areas the most (47% of visits). But the average visit lasted one hour and 45 minutes, the shortest visit of all habitat types. Visits to mountains and moorlands were longest, lasting on average three hours and two minutes. This was followed by trips to freshwater areas, such as lochs, at two hours and 41 minutes.

Scotland represented 10% of estimated UK time spent on outdoor recreation during 2017. In the same year, the average person in Scotland spent 247 hours on outdoor recreation. This was 18% higher than the UK average of 208 hours. This is because of more visits per person in Scotland. People in Scotland took 121 outdoor recreation visits in 2017, which were 29 (31%) more visits than the UK average of 92 visits.

Source: Office for National Statistics and Scottish Natural Heritage

Source: Office for National Statistics and Scottish Natural Heritage

In 2017, UK natural capital provided outdoor recreation valued at £7,986 million. Scottish visits represented around 5% of this (£430 million).

Between 2009 and 2017, the value of UK recreation decreased by 11% (from £8,959 million). This was despite visit numbers increasing 33% (from 3.7 billion to 4.9 billion). The value of Scottish recreation also decreased by 47% from £815 million to £430 million.

Scottish people are staying longer and visiting the outdoors more, while opting for cheaper visits. Average spend per visit in Scotland decreased from £2.16 in 2009 to £0.78 in 2017. The main driver of the fall in expenditure was falling travel costs, down from £1.68 to £0.55 per visit over the same period.

Time spent on outdoor recreation has many additional benefits beyond expenditure, such as health and well-being. The value of these benefits is not currently being captured in the recreation account.

Source: Office for National Statistics and Scottish Natural Heritage

Outdoor recreation in urban areas and coastal areas had the largest average annual expenditure (£194 million and £126 million respectively). Meanwhile, average expenditure per visit during this period was greatest for mountain and moorland (£3.80), followed by "Other" areas (£3.73) and coastal margins (£2.24). This is despite urban areas (£1.00) having higher visit rates.

Source: Office for National Statistics and Scottish Natural Heritage

Urban areas (£3,342 million) and coastal margins (£1,640 million) in the UK saw the largest average annual expenditure. In contrast to Scotland, UK expenditure in mountain and moorland remains the smallest (£509 million). UK average annual expenditure per person in mountain and moorland was £9.80 between 2009 and 2017, as opposed to £26.56 in Scotland.

Source: Office for National Statistics and Scottish Natural Heritage

Recreation and aesthetic value in house prices

We have already estimated the value of green and blue spaces through house prices at the UK level. However, there are two important caveats to note before interpreting the estimates for Scotland. First, we were unable to include data on Scottish schools as Education Scotland only inspect a sample of schools and educational establishments are not given an overall inspection outcome in the same way that Ofsted and Estyn provide. Since there is a strong correlation between house prices and proximity to school¹, this lack of data will reduce the precision of the Scottish model. Future work might hope to use alternative data sources on the quality of Scottish schools.

Second, it is possible that our sample of urban property prices are underestimates of actual urban property prices in Scotland. We source property price data from Zoopla, which uses advertised price rather than the selling price. However, Scottish properties are marketed with either a fixed price or "offers over" – the minimum offer accepted by the seller. As bidding for "offers over" houses can drive up the selling price of properties, our data on advertised prices could underestimate the selling price.

Living near (within 500 metres) publicly accessible green and blue spaces added on average £2,393 to property prices in Scottish urban areas. Please note that throughout this section when referring to "green spaces" this is publicly accessible green space².

The hedonic pricing approach analyses the variables that affect house prices, including the willingness to pay for living close to green and blue spaces. Table 7 shows the variables included in the model. We can use this approach to measure the value of the "free" recreational trips to nearby green spaces, which are missing from the recreation account. It is worth noting that some of the differences that we attribute to green or blue spaces may be because of additional characteristics of the property or the local area, which the model is unable to identify.

Table 7: Variables included in the model

Source: Office for National Statistics

To work out the value of living near to urban green and blue spaces, we estimate the difference between the predicted house price based on real data and the predicted house price if there were no green or blue spaces³. In Scotland, the estimated effect of living near green or blue spaces was £2,393.3 on average in 2016 (see Table 8). This represents about 1.8% of the average Scottish property price in our sample.

In 2016, there were 2.57 million residential properties in Scotland. To work out the total stock value for green and blue spaces we multiply this by the average annual value – £2,393.3 – to get £6.1 billion. We can make a coarse estimate that there are around 2.16 million residential properties in urban areas of Scotland⁴. This would produce an alternative total stock value of £5.2 billion for 2016, though excluding the value of green and blue spaces in rural areas. Because of difficulties in obtaining urban housing estimates for the UK, we aim to fix this issue in the next iteration of the UK and Scottish natural capital accounts.

We can also split the total stock value to look at the separate recreational and aesthetic values (see Table 8).

The recreational services are measured by the distance to and area of blue and green spaces while the aesthetic services are captured by the view over green or blue spaces. For example, in 2016, the recreational benefit of living within 500 metres of green or blue space was estimated to be worth £5.6 billion, while the aesthetic benefit was valued at £0.54 billion.

Table 8: In 2016, the total stock value of living within 500 metres of green and blue space was estimated to be £6.1 billion

Value of cultural services capitalised into property prices, 2018 prices, Scotland, 2010 to 2016¹

Source: Office for National Statistics

For annual values, we can present an equivalent rental value of living within 500 metres of green or blue space shown in Table 9X. "Imputed rent" is a national accounting term for what homeowners would receive if all homes were rented. It can be thought of as the amount that non-renters are willing to pay themselves for the housing services they produce. This must be imputed as homeowners do not receive payment on their property.

Table 9: In 2016, the estimated rental value of living within 500 metres of green and blue space was estimated to be £242 million

Imputed rental benefit from green and blue space, £ million (2018 prices), Scotland, 2010 to 2016¹

Source: Office for National Statistics

Notes:

1. The year of 2009 was excluded for Scotland as the sample size was too small.

Travel to work areas (TTWA) are geographical areas created to approximate labour market areas. These are designed so that most people live and work within these defined areas, while relatively few people commute between areas⁴. Table 10 presents the average effect of living near green and blue spaces in different TTWA. We report both the absolute effect and the effect relative to the average property price in the area.

Out of the 10 most sampled TTWA, Edinburgh had the greatest average effect (£6,800.4). Edinburgh also had the greatest average value percentage increase relative to the houses in that area (2.9%).

One explanation for this could be that people in Edinburgh use their local greenspace slightly more than the Scottish average in 2017⁵, and that these residents are therefore relatively more willing to pay for closer proximity to green and blue space. Another reason could be that there is a slightly higher level of satisfaction with council parks and open spaces in Edinburgh than the Scottish average in 2018⁶, and that the quality of this local greenspace is reflected in the higher average effect of living close to green or blue space.

Table 10: Edinburgh had the greatest increase in the average value from properties within 500 metres of green and blue spaces

Average effect of green and blue space on property price by TTWA, Scotland, 2009 to 2016

Source: Office for National Statistics

Table 11: The average effect of green and blue spaces as a proportion of the property price is relatively similar across most deciles

Average effect of green and blue space by SIMD, Scotland, 2009 to 2016

Source: Office for National Statistics

Notes for: Cultural services

1. See for instance this publication from Department for Education.

2. Any green space that has a specific function in its use, for example, public parks or gardens, playing fields or golf courses. These spaces contain natural land cover and can also include some blue space, for example, a park that has a lake within it. Blue spaces include all inland water bodies, for example, rivers, lakes, ponds, canals and so on.

3. We set areas and view of green and blue spaces to zero and distance to 500 metres.

4. See Table 2.16 for Scotland in the Scottish Household Survey local authority tables, excluding accessible and remote rural areas from urban stock of residential properties.

5. For more details on how travel to work areas (TTWA) are defined, see this publication from Office for National Statistics.

6. See Figure 10.7 for Edinburgh City in the Scottish Household Survey local authority tables, 2017.

7. See tab 2.16 of the Scottish Surveys Core Questions supplementary tables.