Spatial heterogeneity of willingness to pay for forest management

The paper investigates spatial heterogeneity of the 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 (GIS) data related to forest characteristics are used to explain individual-specific willingness to pay (WTP) values, derived from a discrete choice experiment (DCE) 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 more highly ecologically valuable forests in respondents’ area, the more they prefer extending areas of national forest protection. In addition, we 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 both benefits analysis and policy-making.