Experimental choice analysis of non-market values for ecosystem management with preference heterogeneity

To address the efficiency and equity issues in forest management with non-market outputs, to facilitate communication among stakeholders of forest management, and to provide information to policy makers about the heterogeneous public preference structure for the non-market attributes of ecosystem management for better policy-making, this study assesses the non-market values for ecosystem management. These values include biodiversity, aesthetics and rural employment impact for three communities in Washington State: timber rural, other rural and urban communities.; An experimental choice analysis method is utilized in this study to assess the environmental and social values for forest management alternatives for all eight million acres of timber land in Western Washington. Random utility theory is employed to derive the total and marginal willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-accept of the non-market attributes by the three communities in Washington State following the estimation of multinomial logit models. A tradeoff relationship between biodiversity, aesthetics, wood products and rural employment impact is established for the three communities. For, example, with biodiversity level at 60 and rural forest-related job losses at 5000, each household in urban communities each year in Washington state is willing to pay {dollar}32.5 for an additional unit of improvement of biodiversity, and is willing to accept {dollar}46.0 for an additional 1000 unit of rural job losses, which means that, at the given biodiversity and job loss levels, each household in urban communities each year is willing to trade 707 additional rural forest related job losses with one unit of biodiversity improvement, ceteris paribus. Similar tradeoff relationship can be obtained for any two of the attributes at any levels.; The three communities have different preferences for the environmental and social attributes, especially for biodiversity and aesthetics. For example, the WTP for aesthetics is higher for urban communities at any aesthetics level than timber rural and other rural communities, with timber rural communities being the lowest. Public preferences for forest management are impacted significantly by their age, education, income, employment status, special interests, and duration of residency in Washington State.; Through an example, the study shows that the resulting tradeoff parameters and the tested preference structure across stakeholder groups can provide valuable insights on ecosystem management for making public policy decisions that take into account both efficiency and equity issues.; The study shows that the experimental choice analysis method appears to be a very promising method for environmental valuation, especially in cases where the environmental amenities to be valued have multiple attributes and substitutes.