Contingent Valuation of Forest Ecosystem Protection

Abstract

In recent decades, concerns have arisen about the proper valuation of the world's forests. While some of these concerns have to do with market distortions for timber products or inadequate data on non-timber forest products, an additional challenge is to uncover the economic worth of nonmarket services provided by forest ecosystems (Kramer et al. 1997). This has led to a growing number of publications addressing the valuation of forest ecosystem services, on topics such as carbon sequestration and endangered species habitat. In this chapter, we focus on the contingent valuation method (CVM) to assess the structure, health, and extent of forest ecosystems.1