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• People placed little value on energy peat, biodiversity was regarded as the most important ecosystem service. • Carbon storage was a difficult concept for discrete choice experiment respondents. • Participatory multi-criteria decision analysis was helpful in structuring the analysis. • Deliberative valuation contributed to leaning on ecosystem services. • Full integration between valuation methods based on different understanding of rationality is problematic. This paper presents a multi-method valuation study using discrete choice experiment, participatory multi-criteria decision analysis and deliberative citizens' panels to evaluate the value of peatland ecosystem services in southern Finland. All three valuation studies addressed the same scenarios and drew on the same biophysical assessment data to facilitate a comparison of the valuation processes as well as the results. The results indicate that people place high value on regulating and cultural ecosystem services, especially on biodiversity, and less value on energy peat. The experiences sustain the argument that learning is important as people rarely have ordered set of preferences for unfamiliar objects like regulating services. They also illustrate the scope of citizen and consumer preferences and support the assumptions that preferences may change as a result of well-informed group deliberation. In terms of integration, the lesson learned is that regardless of the preference elicitation method, all valuation studies would benefit from structured and participatory approach when defining the scenarios as well as attributes and their levels. Furthermore, full integration is not possible among different valuation methods, which can be conceptualized as value articulating institutions, operating under different rationalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Environmental value transfer needs to be understood in the context of scientific information use in general. This provides a different perspective upon the reasons why benefit transfer in particular appears so controversial and raises concerns over the limited types of validity testing being undertaken by those supporting such applications as ecosystem services valuation. Another key issue, which we emphasise, is the unintentional challenge to standard economic theory raised by the models used to conduct value transfers. Existing value transfer practice reveals the need for a more inclusive approach if environmental values are to be addressed. We argue that there are robust alternative means for including multiple environmental values in decision processes, these cannot be dismissed out of hand, and analysts should be expanding their understanding of the available approaches which include attitude and norm measures, multi-criteria analysis and participatory deliberative institutions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The ecosystem services literature rests on the premise that an increased understanding of ecosystems, ecosystem services and, in particular, the value of ecosystem services will feed to decision-making. Yet, there is little evidence for the assumed demand and applicability of valuation knowledge in real-life policy and decision-making processes, and the use of such knowledge has received little in-depth analytical attention. Motivated by these observations, we have conducted an empirical analysis of ecosystem service value knowledge use. Our analysis of policy actors' experiences and expectations regarding value knowledge in Finland's peatland policy draws on ten interviews with eleven policy actors. Focusing on the usefulness and uses of valuation knowledge, we analyze the ways in which values are framed and value knowledge is expected to influence the rights to use ecosystem services. Our analysis shows that policy actors expect a better understanding of ecosystem service values to support the consideration of benefits. Yet, what they view as crucial knowledge needs aligns with their sectoral or organizational position as well as the interests they represent. Hence, valuation does not provide a solution to distributional debates or conflicts over rights, but it can have an important function as the provider of background knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses problems related to transferring market concepts to non-market domains. More specifically it is about fallacies following from the use of the commodity concept in environmental valuation studies. First of all, the standard practice tends to misconstrue the ethical aspects related to environmental choices by forcing them into becoming ordinary trade-off problems. Second, the commodity perspective ignores important technical interdependencies within the environment and the relational character of environmental goods. These areall properties that have made many such goods escape the commoditisation pressure of markets in the first place. Further, it is shown that these interdependencies are the source of some of the ethical dilemmas observed. Finally, inherent characteristics of the environment tend to make the concept of the margin, so indispensable to economic calculus, either difficult or irrelevant to define. The commodity 'fiction' twists the perception of the environment from systems preservation to items use or transformation. This is a problem of increased importance as we approach potential systems perturbations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]