Improving human well-being through community-led coastal restoration

Coastal and marine conservation efforts are largely motivated by the ecological benefits of healthy habitats and their ecosystem services. Ecosystem restoration is a human endeavour, yet there is a paucity of research on the well-being benefits that people derive from participating in conservation. Focusing on the coastal communities of southern Australia, we explore the emotional, psychological, and social well-being benefits of participating in coastal conservation activities, and how these interact with ecological grief and anxiety. We surveyed individuals that regularly volunteer in coastal conservation, individuals who regularly use the coastal environment for leisure (recreational fishers), and those that do neither (control group). Our results suggest that engaging in marine conservation or recreational fishing improves social and psychological well-being. Volunteers also self-report better emotional well-being, while fishers do not. Although levels of ecological grief and anxiety were consistent across groups, our findings indicate that volunteering in coastal conservation may remedy the negative impacts on well-being from high levels of ecological anxiety and grief. We show that well-being benefits derived from volunteering are distinct from other nature-based recreational activities. These results illustrate that, for coastal societies, participating in community-led restoration projects provides human well-being benefits that are unique from other coastal activities, yet are seldom documented by conservation research. Recognising the social value of conservation activities is integral to effectively estimating the socio-ecological benefits of ecosystem restoration.