Comparing individual and collective valuation of ecosystem service tradeoffs: A case study from montane forests in southern California, USA

Accounting for the tradeoffs and importance urban, disadvantaged communities place on ecosystem services has implications for the management of nearby forests. Although stated preference valuation approaches are often used, they are based on an individual’s perspective and rarely account for collective or societal values. Thus, alternative methods are needed to capture this dichotomy from urban communities who may not even be aware of these benefits to themselves or society at-large. We explored individual and collective importance of, and tradeoffs for, ecosystem services (ES) and ecosystem disservices (ED) by urban residents living near montane forests in greater Los Angeles, California, USA. Using an online panel survey, individual (I-rationality) versus collective (We-rationality) scenarios, best-worst scaling (BWS) choice experiments, and latent class analyses, we ranked the importance and tradeoffs among ES-ED attributes to nearby residents based on the frequency of visits to montane forests as well as Hispanic ethnicity. Results show statistically significant tradeoffs and differences in importance rankings between individual versus collective valuation scenarios. Under the individual valuation scenario, non-Hispanics highly ranked the high forest density indicator, which has implications for wildfire EDs to montane forests and communities. Gender and income were more influential sociodemographic factors affecting importance for water and recreation-related ES than was education. Our BWS and econometric methods, attributes, and importance rankings can facilitate participatory processes with diverse urban communities and designing more effective policies and management guidelines. This approach can also more inclusively, and equitably, account for the tradeoffs and values that nearby urban communities place on ES/ED from Wildland-Urban Interface forests.