Valuing the benefits of an afforestation project in a peri-urban area with choice experiments

Plain woods in the Veneto region have progressively disappeared since the 19th century. This has produced a decrease in environmental and landscape quality with fewer social benefits accruing from the rural land. The demand for environmental conservation and recreational areas has increased in recent years, especially in the urban context. In order to meet these needs the Venice City Council decided to establish an extensive wood on the Venice hinterland. Due to the high costs of the project it was important to evaluate its benefits in monetary terms and if a mixed landscape might produce a higher benefits flow than a dense wood. The objectives of our study are to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for different surface allocations of the future Wood of Mestre and to better understand the influence on WTP of the delay of the benefits due to the time needed for forest growth. Our first finding was that people prefer a mixed solution in terms of surface allocation: the wood–meadow mix (75% wood, 25% meadow) is at the top of the sample preferences. Second, the WTP of the preferred afforestation programme is €51 year/family (random parameter logit results). The social benefits derived on a 10-year basis considering the presence of animals and lakes in the preferred scenario are €62,755/ha (random parameter logit results). The research highlighted how WTP has an inverse correlation with age. Nonetheless the WTP of older people is not negligible and this appears to support the hypothesis that the wood will also have a bequest value. The WTP also tends to decline with the distance of the district where the interviewees live. Finally, CE proves to be a consistent and robust methodology for forest benefits evaluation that can provide both land management and quantitative information to policymakers.