EM Readers:Global, Diverse, and Effective

Nearly half of Ecosystem Marketplace readers are private-sector professionals engaged in sustainable development, and a small but growing number are working in the developing world.  Nearly a quarter are academics, and less than 10% work in government.  These are just some of the insights gleaned from our recent reader survey.

Nearly half of Ecosystem Marketplace readers are private-sector professionals engaged in sustainable development, and a small but growing number are working in the developing world.   Nearly a quarter are academics, and less than 10% work in government.   These are just some of the insights gleaned from our recent reader survey.

31January 2012 | We learned a few things about you this past Fall – for example, we learned that there’s a 39% chance that you visit Ecosystem Marketplace on a daily or weekly basis.

That’s one of the findings of our 2011 Reader Survey, which 317 of you filled out completely, helping us learn a bit about our readers — and plan for the future of Ecosystem Marketplace.   We learned, for example, which of our products you like the most, and which topics within those products you’re most interested in.   We also learned where you’re located, what part of the industry you work in, and how you use and share our content.

But as is often the case, the more you know the more you realize what you don’t know.   With a much improved understanding of you our readers came many questions about the work we do, our impacts, and the future.

We learned, for example, that 24% of you like our articles, but that 32% of you consider our highly-cited “State of” reports to be our most valuable output.   The newsletters and daily news feed — both of which highlight news from around the world of ecosystem services — fill out the major finds.   But what market-focused services is Ecosystem Marketplace missing out on? Is there a better format or different analysis you’d like to see?

Pie Graph of Most Useful Survey Responses

The topics that you were interested in, however, were all over the board — though Voluntary Carbon and Forest Carbon were the topics you most want to see more of.   Do you think this is and will continue to be the focus of the ecosystem assets world?   What topics will grab people’s attention in the future?

More than half of you are located in North America and Europe, and 13%   of you are from developing countries – although our web analytics tell us that only 7% of our readers are physically located in developing countries.   (This may reflect the fact that many of you who work in developing countries are actually located in developed countries, which we’ll get to in a moment.)

A large segment of you identify yourselves as being part of academia, with a close second identifying as consultants, followed by project developers.   When combined, project developers, consultants and industry/business make up 41% of visitors — which means a large percentage of our readership comes from the private sector.

Pie Graph of Survey Response for Role

Especially promising was the way in which you, the reader, utilized our reports and articles.   As expected, many of you utilized Ecosystem Marketplace material to research PES in Developed and Developing country, but a greater number applied what you learned in the Developing world (see above).   Our readership may be low (but growing!) in those countries, but it is exciting to hear that Ecosystem Marketplace’s work is a part of our reader’s sustainable development efforts around the world.   Will projects continue to proliferate in the developing world? Or will the ecosystem service world shift focus to the developed nations?      

Though 60% of survey takers stay connected with Ecosystem Marketplace by visiting the site, a growing number of you connect through Twitter and LinkedIn.   Soon, you will be able to connect directly to Ecosystem Marketplace on our Facebook—stay tuned!

This coming September, we will hold another reader survey and we hope that you will consider participating.   However, we don’t want to wait until then to hear from you!   Please add your thoughts about these results in the comment box below or email us at [email protected].

Please see our Reprint Guidelines for details on republishing our articles.