PUTTING A VALUE ON TREES: AN ECONOMIST'S PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Summary Economists try to put a monetary value on trees to aid rational decisions about scarce resources. Examples exist of all the eight general methods of valuing non-market products. All methods encounter problems, to do with what is valued, by whom, from what perspective; how subjectivity influences value, and how values are scaled or partitioned according to circumstance. For a value which is so context-sensitive, an appropriate valuation protocol involves expertise drawing upon more than one method: expert aesthetic judgement calibrated by reference to the relevant population; choice experiments to establish a cardinal scale of value; and reference to data on population preferences revealed in house purchase and travel decisions. A rough indicative valuation of amenity trees in the UK was £50 000 000 000 over a 100 year period.