Author's personal copy Providing preference-based support for forest ecosystem service management Mikołaj Czajkowski a, ⁎, Anna Bartczak a , Marek Giergiczny a , Stale Navrud b , Tomasz Żylicz a a University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences, Warsaw Ecological Economics Center, Dluga 44/50, Warsaw 00-241, Poland b Norwegian University of Life Sciences, School of Economics and Business, P.O. Box 5003, 1432 Aas, Norway abstract article info Article history: Received 1 March 2013 Received in revised form 31 October 2013 Accepted 2 November 2013 Available online 2 December 2013 Keywords: Forest recreation Ecosystem services Stated preferences Preference and scale heterogeneity Discrete choice modeling The paper examines people's preferences for changes in selected ecosystem services resulting from new management strategies of forest areas in Poland. This study applies a generalized multinomial logit model to interpret the results of a discrete choice experiment administered to a representative sample of 1001 Poles. The questionnaire included three physical attributes: protecting the most ecologically valuable forest ecosystems, reducing litter in forests, and improving recreation infrastructure. The selection of these attributes was motivated by extensive qualitative research regarding to what indicators of biodiversity, na- ture protection and recreation possibilities people are most sensitive. The fourth attribute was monetary, that is, additional costs associated with the new programs that would have to be financed out of increased taxes. The results allowed for an estimation of implicit prices regarding the choice attributes and calculating welfare measures of specific forest management scenarios. The study revealed interesting connections be- tween respondents' current forest recreation patterns and the importance they place on the various attri- butes of forests. The paper particularly focuses on respondents' unobserved and observed preference heterogeneity, as well as scale heterogeneity, and the study demonstrates how heterogeneity can improve the models and provide insight into how users and non-users of forests may benefit from introducing a par- ticular policy. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction A better understanding of human attitudes toward the environment is an essential element for obtaining public support for environmental protection programs and for improving decision-making processes by framing environmental goals in an efficient way under limited public fi- nancial sources. One of the key problems associated with conservation policy decisions is that because environmental benefits are often not directly reflected in market prices, conservation is mostly perceived as a cost burden, rather than an investment in social values. Economic sciences, however, have developed methods that estimate the economic value provided by non-market goods and services by using either revealed or stated preferences of individuals. Recommendations concerning the use of the results of non-market valuation studies in designing and implementing conservation policies have recently been made by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005) and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity initiative (Sukhdev et al., 2010). While non-market valuation techniques and stated preference methods have been applied to value forest externalities for several decades, most of the available studies have focused on estimating recreational benefits (see Giergiczny (2009) for a comprehensive review). A considerable number of empirical studies were devoted to public preferences for different types of forests and the attributes that characterize them (e.g., Yarrow, 1966; Daniel et al., 1976; Arthur, 1977; Zube et al., 1982; Jensen and Koch, 2000; Lee, 2001; Blasco et al., 2009; Edwards et al., 2012). The main goal of these studies was to provide information to forest managers on the types and features of forests that are likely to improve the recrea- tional and aesthetic values of the land. However, as the majority of them relied on images of forest stands that were scored by re- spondents, they did not necessarily provide monetary estimates as- sociated with the changes, and only a handful focused on the valuation of the benefits associated with changes in forest manage- ment practices (e.g., Mattsson and Li, 1994; Horne et al., 2005; Mill et al., 2007; Nielsen et al., 2007). Giergiczny (2009) identified 140 non-market valuation studies concerning changes in forest management conducted across Europe. These studies provided 280 estimates of different non- timber benefits offered by forests. The studies were conducted in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), and the relevant work published in peer reviewed journals is limited to Czajkowski and Hanley (2009) and Bartczak et al. (2012). 1 These studies reveal different for- est recreation and valuation patterns in Poland than in the other Forest Policy and Economics 39 (2014) 1–12 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +48 507 056 557; fax: +48 228 312 846. E-mail address: miq@wne.uw.edu.pl (M. Czajkowski). 1 We also identify some gray literature and conference presentations referencing addi- tional studies conducted in the CEE region (Šišák et al., 1997; Melichar, 2001; Nagypal, 2005; Melichar, 2007). 1389-9341/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2013.11.002 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Forest Policy and Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/forpol