Psychographic profile affects willingness to pay for ecosystem services provided by Mediterranean high nature value farmland

- We combined multifunctional agriculture and ecosystem service concepts.
- We performed psychographic analysis and economic valuation of ES in Mediterranean HNVF.
- Conservationist profiles state higher WTP than productivists profiles.
- Changes from liberalization to targeted support agricultural policies increase the WTP.
- Preferences for individual ecosystem service are multi-dependent.

Our aim was to examine how psychographic profiles affect willingness to pay for ecosystem services in Mediterranean high nature value farmland. We combined psychographic analysis and economic valuation to: i) identify different psychographic profiles based on attitudes towards the economy and environment, rural development and agricultural intensification, food quality and consumption, and agri-environmental policy; and ii) measure the economic value that the psychographic profiles assign to key ecosystem services in different agricultural policy scenarios. We analysed two populations in Spain (the general population and the local residents of the study area). We identified two psychographic profiles in each population focusing on productivist and conservationist attitudes. Respondents in all profiles were highly concerned about forest wildfires, followed by the availability of quality products for those with productivist profiles, the biodiversity maintenance for the general conservationists and a more human-intervened landscape for the local conservationists. The willingness to pay for ecosystem services altogether differed between the psychographic profiles, from 88€ of general productivists to 334€ of local conservationists. We demonstrated that attitudes concerning ecosystem services have a strong influence on their willingness to pay. We argued that psychographic differences should be considered when designing and legitimising EU agri-environmental and conservation policies.

Graphical AbstractWillingness to pay for ecosystem services in Mediterranean high nature value farmland.85