IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/teepxx/v4y2015i2p202-222.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The social benefits and costs of preserving forest biodiversity and ecosystem services

Author

Listed:
  • Henrik Lindhjem
  • Kristine Grimsrud
  • Ståle Navrud
  • Stein Olav Kolle

Abstract

Ecologists recommend preserving more of the old-growth forests in Norway, as half of the species have forests as their main habitat and many are in decline. We investigate benefits and costs over a 50-year period of increasing forest conservation from 1.4% of the productive forest area (the situation in 2007) to 2.8% (doubling), 4.5% ('ecologists' minimum') and 10% (one goal suggested in public debate). The benefits are estimated based on a national contingent valuation (CV) survey of Norwegian households. Two independent measures of total costs are used: (1) the actual compensation amounts paid to forest owners and (2) results from a survey of forest owners' minimum willingness to accept compensation to preserve. Results show that social benefits outweigh costs of the three conservation plans by a large margin. The middle option of 4.5% has the highest net present value. This result is robust to a range of assumptions, including considerations of potential hypothetical bias in willingness to pay estimates. The results of this cost-benefit analysis reflect the preferences of the general population, the authorities and the forest owners with respect to biodiversity and ecosystem services conservation, and supplement the expert opinion of ecologists.

Suggested Citation

  • Henrik Lindhjem & Kristine Grimsrud & Ståle Navrud & Stein Olav Kolle, 2015. "The social benefits and costs of preserving forest biodiversity and ecosystem services," Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(2), pages 202-222, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:teepxx:v:4:y:2015:i:2:p:202-222
    DOI: 10.1080/21606544.2014.982201
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/21606544.2014.982201
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/21606544.2014.982201?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Iversen, Endre Kildal & Lindhjem, Henrik & Jacobsen, Jette Bredahl & Grimsrud, Kristine, 2021. "Moving (back) to greener pastures? Social benefits and costs of climate forest planting in Norway," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    2. Anne Stenger & Patrice Harou, 2015. "Special issue on forest investments profitability," Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(2), pages 125-128, July.
    3. Jing Ning & Jianjun Jin & Foyuan Kuang & Xinyu Wan & Chenyang Zhang & Tong Guan, 2019. "The Valuation of Grassland Ecosystem Services in Inner Mongolia of China and Its Spatial Differences," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(24), pages 1-14, December.
    4. Endre Kildal Iversen & Kristine Grimsrud & Henrik Lindhjem & Jette Bredahl Jacobsen, 2019. "Trade-offs between carbon sequestration, landscape aesthetics and biodiversity in a cost-benefit analysis of land use options in Norway," Discussion Papers 915, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    5. Kristine Grimsrud & Cathrine Hagem & Kristina Haaskjold & Henrik Lindhjem & Megan Nowell, 2024. "Spatial Trade-Offs in National Land-Based Wind Power Production in Times of Biodiversity and Climate Crises," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 87(2), pages 401-436, February.
    6. Whitehead, John C., 2016. "Plausible responsiveness to scope in contingent valuation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 17-22.
    7. Divinski, Itai & Becker, Nir & Bar (Kutiel), Pua, 2018. "Opportunity costs of alternative management options in a protected nature park: The case of Ramat Hanadiv, Israel," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 494-504.
    8. Grimsrud, Kristine & Graesse, Maximo & Lindhjem, Henrik, 2020. "Using the generalised Q method in ecological economics: A better way to capture representative values and perspectives in ecosystem service management," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    9. Divinsky, Itai & Becker, Nir & Bar (Kutiel), Pua, 2017. "Ecosystem service tradeoff between grazing intensity and other services - A case study in Karei-Deshe experimental cattle range in northern Israel," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 16-27.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:teepxx:v:4:y:2015:i:2:p:202-222. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/teep20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.