Personal time quality as a transformative metric for assessing cultural ecosystem services

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are a policy priority under the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework; however, current approaches either commodify CES through monetary valuation or rely on plural, non-comparable metrics, leaving use and experiential quality poorly captured. We propose the subjective quality of personal time—how “well spent” or “wasted” moments feel in a place—as a universal, scalar indicator of CES use. We outline practical routes to measurement via participatory mapping (PPGIS), lightweight experience sampling, and passive digital traces, and show how geosocial collaborative filtering can translate ratings into place-based recommendations. Reframing CES as the increment to time quality provided by the environment resolves the tension between monetary valuation and non-monetary pluralism, yielding a single, comparable metric that remains grounded in lived experience. A proposed PPGIS 2.0 workflow can collect time-quality ratings, tag activities and landscape settings, and return immediate, personalised recommendations, creating continuous data streams rather than one-off surveys. Integration with remote sensing and existing mobility datasets enables mapping of CES potential where participatory data are sparse. A time-quality metric makes CES visible, comparable and actionable across contexts, aligning monitoring with the Global Biodiversity Framework and supporting transformative, people-centred decisions. It offers a generic, accessible message for non-specialists: manage places based on the quality of the time they enable, not merely the quantity of visits, and use participatory, data-driven tools to recommend, protect, and enhance those experiences.