Estimating the willingness to pay for regulating and cultural ecosystem services from forested Siwalik landscapes: perspectives of disaggregated users

We assessed forest users’ willingness to pay (WTP) for regulating and cultural services based on their socio-economic status (rich vs. poor), proximity forests (nearby distant), management modalities (community forestry collaborative management). As expected, a huge variation was found in WTP among these sub-groups. The wealthier households (HH) preferred ‘cash’ whereas poor HHs ‘labour’ as payment option. Forest’s ecosystem (FES) research have largely concentrated aggregated economic valuation, while minimal consideration has been paid distributional issues of many such water quality improvement (WQI), flood control (FC), bequest aesthetic values. high-priority FES the various sub-groups (nearby/distant, rich/poor community/collaborative users) explored options Siwalik landscape Nepal. carried out contingent valuation survey 253 (ranging from 31 33 each sub-groups). performed generalised linear mixed model (GLMM) analyse data RStudio. Spatial distance wealth levels respondents play crucial role FES. GLMM analysis indicated that non-marketed differed terms cash labour format. Generally, is higher in-terms better option HH. Disaggregated should be considered designing future interventions.