Analysis Measurement of Bequest Value Using a Non-monetary Payment in a Choice Experiment—The Case of Improving Forest Ecosystem Services for the Benefit of Local Communities in Rural Kenya Iason Diafas a, ⁎ ,1 , Jan Barkmann b , John Mburu c a Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Goettingen, Büsgenweg 5, 37077 Göttingen, Germany b Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Goettingen, Büsgenweg 5, 37077 Göttingen, Germany c Centre for Development Research, University of Bonn, Walter-Flex-Straße 3, 53113 Bonn, Germany abstract article info Article history: Received 19 June 2016 Received in revised form 29 April 2017 Accepted 2 May 2017 Available online xxxx This paper adds to the limited literature on the bequest value of environmental resources. A choice experiment (CE) was carried out in order to estimate the economic value of changes in ecosystem services that impact on the welfare of rural communities in the vicinity of a rainforest in Kenya. Our results demonstrate that, in addition to valuing immediate benefits, respondents were willing to pay 1750Kshs for the use of forest resources by pos- terity. The results also establish that the chosen non-monetary payment vehicle was not evaluated differently to a standard cash payment. © 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V. 1. Introduction Despite the burgeoning use and diversity of stated preference tech- niques in the valuation of environmental resources (CE) in developing countries, the majority of cases share a couple of traits: First, the focus is largely on estimating direct and indirect-use values. Estimates of non-use values, on the other hand, have been fewer in comparison (Bennett and Birol, 2010). Moreover, attempts to estimate non-use values are thus far found mainly in the Contingent Valuation (CV) literature. Non-use values are but one component of the Total Economic Value (TEV) concept. What sets them apart from direct and indirect use values is that they reflect economic value in addition to, or independently of that which arises from a resource's use. Thus individuals may make little or no use of a given environmental resource but would nevertheless feel a ‘loss’ if it were to vanish (Turner et al., 2003). According to the respec- tive motivations, non-use values are often treated either as option, exis- tence or bequest values. Option value relates to the willingness to pay a premium to retain an asset in order to keep alive the option to use it at some point in the future. This premium is to be paid in addition to con- sumer surplus from actual use (Walsh et al., 1984). Existence value is the willingness to pay (WTP) to secure the existence of a natural re- source/species even though no use of it is expected; and bequest value represents the economic importance that people attribute to the preservation of an environmental asset for future generations. Whether or not these generations actually use the asset is irrelevant. What mat- ters is the knowledge that future generations will have the opportunity to do so, should they please. Despite these value definitions, the distinction between the TEV sub- components is not always clear-cut in practice. This is due to the fact that they arise from environmental changes that may affect people's welfare, yet they are not reflected in any observable behavior. Neverthe- less, the importance of non-use values has been repeatedly documented in a number of valuation studies, probably the most well known of which, the Exxon Valdez damage assessment (Carson et al., 2003), con- firmed people's WTP for a resource or place they might never get to use or even see firsthand. Other studies have also attempted to estimate non-use values. While some of them make no distinction between the three types of non-use values (Adamowicz et al., 1998; Rolfe et al., 2000; Casey et al., 2008), others have actually attempted to assign the inferred WTP to a specific type (Rolfe and Windle, 2005; Walsh et al., 1984; Langford et al., 2004; Vesely, 2007; Cerda et al., 2013). What such studies have in common is that they are mostly carried out in mid to high-income countries. Unfortunately the quantification of non-use values in low-income and subsistence economies has been, to our knowledge, very limited to date. According to O'Garra (2009), this fact may reflect a pervasive view that non-use values can only be held by rich people, which is the flip side of the commonly-held view that low-income countries are too poor to be green. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there are only a handful of published CE studies on economic estimates of non-use values in low- income settings. In the earliest one, Casey et al. (2008) used a choice Ecological Economics 140 (2017) 157–165 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: iason.diafas@pbl.nl (I. Diafas). 1 Present address: Baarsjesweg 271/3, Amsterdam 1058AD, Netherlands. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.05.006 0921-8009/© 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ecological Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon