Non-Market Valuation
Abstract
In addition to commodities such as timber, forest ecosystems provide an array of goods and services that are not priced in markets but maintain, to a large degree, the characteristics of public goods (non-rivalry and non-excludability). Markets do not recognize scarcity of non-market resources and cannot be relied upon to allocate these resources to their highest and best use. In addition, the production of commodities can diminish the non-market values of forests by more than the gain in commodity benefits, leading to losses in social welfare. Non-market valuation methods, as illustrated in this section, have been developed and applied to address these problems of sub- optimal resource allocation.