Abstract

Minnesota is home to more than 17 million acres of forested landscape. The forested landscape is owned by various state and federal agencies and private entities. Public and private landowners have different management objectives and use different management practices to pursue these objectives. Management practices impact timber volumes and value and also have impacts on critical ecosystem services. Understanding the value of ecosystem services is important for assessing the full benefits and costs of alternative forest management practices. This paper seeks to find the value of ecosystem services using a choice experiment. Not surprisingly, results show that survey respondents are in favor of increasing forest based goods and services: timber production, carbon sequestration, water quality, and habitat quality. However, their willingness-to-pay for these ecosystem services varies based on the levels of ecosystem services. We also found a considerable socio-demographic and spatial heterogeneity of willingness to pay for different ecosystem services. We find that households with pro-environmental views have significantly higher marginal willingness to pay for carbon sequestration and water quality. These results provide a better understanding in comparing among forest management practices that have varying degrees of impact on different ecosystem services.

Coauthors: Christopher R. McIntosh, Stephen Polasky