Consumer demand for urban forest ecosystem services and disservices: Examining trade-offs using choice experiments and best-worst scaling

Many studies value urban ecosystem service benefits using residents’ willingness to pay and supply-side analyses of ecosystem attributes. But, few studies account for consumer demand and ecosystem disservices. To address this gap we surveyed 1052 homeowners eliciting consumer demand for key urban fo...

Full description

Autores:
Tipo de recurso:
Fecha de publicación:
2018
Institución:
Universidad del Rosario
Repositorio:
Repositorio EdocUR - U. Rosario
Idioma:
eng
OAI Identifier:
oai:repository.urosario.edu.co:10336/23903
Acceso en línea:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2017.11.009
https://repository.urosario.edu.co/handle/10336/23903
Palabra clave:
Best-worst choice
Costs
Discrete-choice experimentation
Ecosystem service valuation
Socio-ecological scales
Rights
License
Abierto (Texto Completo)
Description
Summary:Many studies value urban ecosystem service benefits using residents’ willingness to pay and supply-side analyses of ecosystem attributes. But, few studies account for consumer demand and ecosystem disservices. To address this gap we surveyed 1052 homeowners eliciting consumer demand for key urban forest ecosystem attributes and service-disservice levels in both their properties and surrounding neighborhood. We use an approach integrating focus group, field data, and surveys to identify consumer preferences and trade-offs between urban forest ecosystem structure-functional attributes and their level of services and disservices. This method, called best worst choice, produces more estimates of utility while reducing the likelihood of introducing biases associated with human cognitive tendencies. Results indicate that consumer choices for property value were highest followed by tree condition, a structural proxy for minimizing disservices, and tree shade, a functional proxy for temperature regulation. We also found evidence of trade-offs in demand for different ecosystem services, significant scale effects, and that willingness to pay for ecosystem disservices was negative. Findings suggest that management, and studies that value and map ecosystem services, using fixed scales should account for end-user demand and functional traits, as consumers can discern trade-offs in benefits and disservices across different cognitive and spatial scales. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.