Abstract
The paper investigates the spatial heterogeneity of public’s preferences for the implementation of a new country-wide forest management and protection program in Poland. Spatial econometric methods and high resolution geographical information system data related to forest characteristics are used to explain the variation in individual-specific willingness to pay (WTP) values, derived from a discrete choice experiment study. We find that respondents’ WTP is higher the closer they live to their nearest forest, and the scarcer forests are in the area where they live. Interestingly, the higher the ecological value of forests in respondents’ area, the more people prefer extending areas of national forest protection. We also investigate spatial patterns in individual-specific WTP scores and in latent class membership probabilities, finding that preferences are indeed spatially clustered. We argue that this clustering should be taken into account in forest management and policy-making.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 705-727 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| Journal | Environmental and Resource Economics |
| Volume | 68 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Early online date | 8 Jul 2016 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Nov 2017 |
Keywords
- Contingent valuation
- Discrete choice experiment
- Forest management
- Kriging
- Litter
- Mixed logit
- Passive protection
- Spatial heterogeneity of preferences
- Spatial-lag
- Tourist infrastructure
- Willingness to pay
Access to Document
- Hanley_2016_ERE_ForestManagement_CC
© The Author(s) 2016. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.