Forest owners' willingness to accept contracts for ecosystem service provision is sensitive to additionality (original) (raw)

A key prerequisite for Payment for Ecosystem services to be effective is that the management measures which landowners are paid to undertake are in fact additional to status quo and hence bring about a change in provision. We investigated Danish forest owners' preferences for conditional contracts for provision of ecosystem services in Natura2000 policies, in a sample which covers 12.5% of the total private forest area. This involves leaving old trees for natural decay, setting aside untouched forest areas, accepting a fixed percentage of broadleaves in the forest and increased access on foot for the public. Forest owners may already provide some of these, e.g. if they derive private benefits from them, hence additionality becomes an issue. This study investigates the link between forest owners' current management practices and their WTA payments for providing specific ecosystem services by eliciting current practice prior to a Choice Experiment on contracts. For most of these ecosystem services, owners differentiate their WTA significantly according to the current management on their property. For example, owners who did not provide extended access had a mean WTA of 14€/ha and year for accepting access up to 15 meters from roads and paths and 28€ /ha and year for accepting access everywhere in their forest. However, forest owners who already allow extended access have a mean WTA around zero.