Browsing by Author "Ikonen, Helena"

Agricultural and forest land use is critically affecting and effected by sustainability challenges both globally and in Finland. One way to aid the situation is through increasing the amount and comprehensiveness of rural land valuations. This can be done for instance by expanding the assessments of underrepresented ecosystem services with the help of participatory valuation methods. Albeit utilising existing methods for this purpose would already provide significant help, participatory valuations could be developed even further by applying virtual reality (VR) value elicitation. Although the utilisation of VR as a versatile study tool has been suggested by several authors, the studies and applications are thus far scarce, though slowly increasing. Hence, this thesis sets out to provide new insights into the implementation of VR and its unique benefits over other methods in the specific case of rural land valuations. The method employed in this paper is integrative literature review, as it gives opportunities to combine literature about other valuation methods and VR’s proven effects and reflect these on rural land valuation studies’ findings and stated future needs of this sector. Central findings demonstrate VR’s potential as a value elicitation tool in rural land valuations by virtue of its ability to offer immersive experiences and render almost any kind of environment accessible. Immersion can help in learning and subsequent value formation, consequently changing intent to behave as well as alter actual behaviour. Therefore, the use of VR can affect both stated and observable values and can affect value study results significantly. On the other hand, accessibility allows participation for all kinds of people regardless of limitations relating to knowledge level, or mental or physical capabilities. Hence, VR can grant access to significantly more people to nature areas otherwise rural, unfamiliar, hard to explore, hard or impossible to get to, or that exist in the past and in the future. In sum, by providing opportunities for increased amount and ease of participation, as well as holistic well-informed valuations, VR offers possibilities to support and drive the sustainability transition and transformation of Finnish rural land use sector. Although findings are promising, more research and practical application of VR are needed. Based on the potential of virtual reality in combination of the needs in rural land use sector, this thesis introduces some example scenarios where VR value elicitation could be used and be useful. The premises of all scenarios are rooted in existing studies, as this can help in gaining information on the applicability, as well as comparability of VR to other established value eliciting methods. This aims to enhance the robustness of VR as a study tool, as robustness can be seen as one of the weak points of VR value elicitation currently.