What ignited Forest Service interest in nonmarket valuation in fire economics?

Abstract

This paper traces the origin and evolution of the application of nonmarket valuation techniques to fire management within the USDA Forest Service. The motivation for contingent valuation (CVM) studies that quantify existence value is traced to the need for monetary benefits of protecting spotted owl old-growth forest habitat from fire in the early 1990s. Two large scale general public surveys successfully demonstrated that CVM could be used to estimate both state level and national level benefits for fire prevention and fire suppression of endangered species critical habitat. By the late 1990s the large-scale wildland urban interface fires resulted in the need to measure what the general public would pay for prescribed burning and mechanical fuel reduction programs. With the advent of conjoint and choice experiments joining CVM as applicable tools for estimating the nonmarket benefits of preventing and suppressing wildland fires, economists' capabilities have grown extensively. Due to the expense and time consuming nature of conducting these surveys, the greatest remaining challenge is formal and systematic incorporation of these types of use and non-use values into wildland fire planning and resource allocation models. Drawing upon the past results, we offer benefit transfer of the existing results as a plausible interim technique to estimate the publics' nonmarket benefits from fire prevention and suppression. We also offer some insights as to the next frontiers in CVM application.

Parent Publication

• Proceedings of the third international symposium on fire economics, planning, and policy: common problems and approaches

Citation

Loomis, John B.; González-Cabán, Armando. 2009. What What ignited Forest Service interest in nonmarket valuation in fire economics? In: González-Cabán, Armando. 2009. Proceedings of the third international symposium on fire economics, planning, and policy: common problems and approaches. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-227 (English). Albany, CA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station. pp. 187-199.