Landscape economic valuation by integrating landscape ecology into landscape economics

The need to implement effective incentive systems for a sustainable management of landscape requires policy makers and stakeholders to understand the monetary values that communities attach to landscape and its characteristics. The estimation of such monetary values has been challenging economists for the last decades because of the complexity of considering landscape components in economic models. To overcome this problem, we suggest a multidisciplinary approach that integrates landscape ecology, landscape preference studies and environmental economics to provide a common framework for collaboration between landscape scientists and economists. Within this approach, firstly a parametric landscape procedure is used to organize the spatial information on landscape by identifying landscape types and quantifying their attributes. Secondly, these indicators are used as explanatory variables in a Choice Experiment of individuals’ preferences for landscape, to assess the economic value that people attach to different landscape attributes. The economic values thus estimated are of particular interest to policy makers as they express the monetary benefits that society receives from landscape and its characteristics. Such values can then be used in cost benefit analyses for evaluating public programs affecting landscape and its features.

► We propose a transdisciplinary approach for landscape economic valuation.
► Landscape is analyzed using landscape ecology methodologies.
► Landscape visual indicators are used to quantify landscape attributes and represent them in the economic models.
► A contingent valuation method is used to elicit people's economic value for landscape.
► The selected visual indicators prove a good representation of landscape complexity and are statistically significant.