In drylands with fragile ecosystems, measures to combat desertification have often failed due to negative effects of unexpected trade-off between ecosystem services. Therefore, it is essential to understand perception and preference of ecosystem services by local people as well as to assess biophysical quantification or economic valuation, in order to choose the best option of combating desertification. In this study we conducted a semantic differential experiment to elucidate how local people perceive ecosystem services by using landscape photos in Naiman, Inner Mongolia, China. The results indicated the importance of attributes such as ethnic group in evaluating ecosystem services.
