Valuation of forest-based nonmarket outputs: A cost-price approach

Nonmarket forest outputs (goods or services not traded in a traditional marketplace) continue to attract increasing attention. Traditional methods of nonmarket valuation, including direct (survey) and indirect approaches, are not widely accepted and often come with high data collection costs. For some situations, like accounting, values based on shadow prices for nonmarket outputs may be adequate.; Analyzing nonmarket outputs produced by timber harvest can be difficult because of the typically large numbers of stands involved in a harvest scheduling problem and temporal aspects of the decision. Models frequently fail from data overload stemming from model size. DUALPLAN, a model overcoming many of these limitations, was used to test a cost-price approach to value grouse recreation-visitor-days (RVDS of consumptive use) and nongame RVDS (nonconsumptive use) while producing timber. Using both simulation and linear programming to report key dual (economic) variables, DUALPLAN identified the marginal costs of producing both timber and the nonmarket outputs from managing a test forest made up of four major covertypes (plus added attributes that generated over 4,600 stands).; The DUALPLAN analyses included development of market and nonmarket economic supply tables, even-flows of timber at various price levels (marginal costs), plus reporting other observable timber and nonmarket (price) impacts from varying management cost and stand attribute (production) variables. Timber and nonmarket price sensitivities were observed valuing grouse and nongame outputs at both the RVD and individual animal level and using nonmarket values developed by other methods (i.e., RPA). Harvest scheduling effects were also observed for all analyses, over time. Data limitations primarily involved unavailable data regarding the relationships between nonmarket output production (i.e., wildlife and dispersed recreation) and timber harvest.; DUALPLAN was effective and computationally inexpensive in cost-pricing both market and nonmarket outputs. While data and production function limitations resulted in only two nonmarket outputs tested, broader applications are possible. The DUALPLAN model could analyze significantly more complex forest problems than tested here. This investigation suggests great potential in exploring the nonmarket economic interactions with stand harvest scheduling, when the nonmarket production functions are known.