title: Paying for Forest Ecosystem Services: Voluntary Versus Mandatory Payments.
abstract: The emergence of new markets for forest ecosystem services can be a compelling opportunity for market diversification for private forest landowners, while increasing the provision of public goods from private lands. However, there is limited information available on the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for specific forest ecosystem services, particularly across different ecosystem market mechanisms. We utilize survey data from Oregon and Washington households to compare marginal WTP for forest ecosystem services and the total WTP for cost-effective bundles of forest ecosystem services obtained from a typical Pacific Northwest forest across two value elicitation formats representing two different ecosystem market mechanisms: an incentive-compatible choice experiment involving mandatory tax payments and a hypothetical private provision scenario modeled as eliciting contributions to the preferred forest management alternative via a provision point mechanism with a refund. A representative household's total WTP for the average forest management program was estimated at $217.59 per household/year under a mandatory tax mechanism and $160.44 per household/per year under a voluntary, crowdfunding-style, contribution mechanism; however, these estimates are not statistically different. Marginal WTP estimates were assessed for particular forest ecosystem service attributes including water quality, carbon storage, mature forest habitat, and public recreational access. This study finds that survey respondents place significant economic value on forest ecosystem services in both elicitation formats and that the distributions of the marginal WTP are not statistically significantly different.
authors.affiliation: Sociology and Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University, 339 Science II, Ames, IA, 50011-3221, USA. geroesch@iastate.edu.
authors.forename: Gabrielle E
authors.initials: GE
authors.lastname: Roesch-McNally
authors.affiliation: School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Box 352100, Seattle, WA, 98195-2100, USA.
authors.forename: Sergey S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Rabotyagov
mesh_terms: D002244:Carbon; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000191:economics*; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D017753:Ecosystem; D065928:Forests; D015205:Northwestern United States; D009922:Oregon; D011998:Recreation; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014861:Washington
chemical_list: D002244:Carbon
keywords: Crowdfunding; Forest ecosystem service; Payment mechanism; Preference elicitation; Provision point mechanism; Stated choice