Ranking the benefits of biodiversity: an exploration of relative values

Public concern about the alarmingly high rate of biodiversity loss has not been matched by public willingness to bear boundless costs to stem the tide of extinction. Because resources for conservation are limited, setting conservation priorities to use those resources effectively is crucial. To do so in a way that addresses people's most pressing concerns about biodiversity loss, managers and policy makers must understand those concerns. This study investigates preferences for an array of benefits associated with biodiversity and wildlife and the relative importance to people of each. A survey was administered to a sample of the US population to explore public preferences for types of benefits often associated with biodiversity: utilitarian (commodity and recreation), ecological (certain and uncertain), aesthetic, symbolic, and humanistic. Respondents were asked to rank hypothetical species presented in choice sets of three species, each described simply in terms of one type of benefit. A rank-ordered multinomial logit model was estimated to establish a ranking of the benefits and evaluate the sensitivity of the ranking to socio-demographic variables. The means of the sample predictions indicated the relative importance of each type of benefit. Confidence intervals were constructed to evaluate the extent to which the ranks could be distinguished from one another. Ecological functions were most important to survey respondents; commodity-based benefits and human attributes were of moderate importance; and recreation, aesthetics, and symbolic references in literature and art appeared to be least important.