Introduction

The recent development of multi-attribute valuation methods has enabled the examination of preferences for environmental goods as defined by their characteristics or attributes. There is a growing number of applications in forest recreation that typically describe the attributes in terms of forest management, congestion levels, evidence of wildlife abundance, the length of travel, etc. (e.g. Boxall et al. 1996; Adamowicz et al. 1998; Boxall and MacNab 2000). Fewer studies, however, have examined the supply of goods that provide non-use or passive-use values (e.g. Tanguay et al. 1995; Adamowicz et al. 1998). The spatial dimension in the supply of goods of passive-use value is even less examined. In this chapter, we look at values associated with specific locations and identify spatial preferences for biodiversity conservation. We discuss the use of spatially explicit multi-attribute valuation with an illustration of a case study of forest management in a system of municipal recreation sites. Use of site-specific attributes provided more information and a richer set of policy implications than when only the average measures of attributes over the complex of sites were used.

Municipal recreation forests in the Nordic countries face a variety of demands including recreational use, nature conservation and, sometimes, the generation of revenue from timber harvesting (Hytönen 1995). These different demands require a range of features from the forest environment. The selected forest management regime as well as the natural forest ecosystem affects the range and abundance of the different features desired by the forest users (e.g. the biodiversity level and the scenery of the site).