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As humanity pushes deeper into the Anthropocene, Social-Ecological Systems (SESs) across the world are facing mounting pressures. Managing, protecting and understanding these systems require research into their complex and interlinked nature. One area that has been met with increased research in recent times is Sense of Place (SoP), broadly defined as the emotional bond that people have with a 'place'. There has been substantial growth in the number of studies seeking to understand and quantify SoP across different contexts to help integrate it into decision-making processes. This targeted scoping review aims to explore the environmental literature for examples of applied studies that measure SoP in social-ecological contexts with a focus on how SoP has been quantified and measured. Our results show a growing body of literature as well as a number of clear knowledge gaps. The majority of studies to date have focussed on the Global North (accounting for 79% of the published papers), particularly the USA and Australia, with the distribution of authors closely mirroring this same pattern. Marine and freshwater ecosystems were understudied in comparison to terrestrial ecosystems. Mixed methods were most commonly used to collect data, with interviews and surveys being the most common instruments. Further research into why SoP is being measured is required, but preliminary investigations indicate there is a perceived applicability to policy and planning. We explore these findings and identify research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We address the problem of landholder participation in biodiversity offsetting, a policy tool based on principles of market-based incentives. Our study focuses on the working rules of offsetting, specifically the rights and responsibilities of landholders. Our case study is an application of biodiversity offsetting in the Greater Sydney Metropolitan area, New South Wales, Australia. We conduct empirical analysis of landholders' perceptions of their rights and responsibilities and subsequently apply an institutionalist perspective to infer implications for public policy reform. We find that landholders' perceptions of their rights and responsibility with regard to i) providing offsets, ii) receiving money for doing so, iii) land management, and iv) transferring the land, elicit diverse reasons for (non)participation in biodiversity offsets in the Greater Sydney Metropolitan area. Some landholders consider themselves in alignment with the current working rules of the scheme, others do not. We reflect on these findings by abductively inferring reasons for institutional reform. The broader significance of our study resides in its potential to inform institutional design in jurisdictions where established schemes are under review, or may become subject to review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]