Forest stakeholders' value preferences in Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

The study investigates societal states of forests that are perceived to enhance human and environmental well-being in Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. Villagers, foresters, park employees, entrepreneurs and environmentalists were surveyed. The survey applied a multi-group social choice method, following six steps: (i) identification of all relevant social states for sustainable forest management; (ii) elicitation of preferences, for different social states, of forest user groups' members; (iii) determination of attributes of users and social states; (iv) aggregation of individual forest value preferences into social value preferences; (v) inter-group comparison of preferences; and (vi) estimation of predictors of social forest value preferences. A distinction is made between the household-perspective and the citizen-perspective of evaluations. As well, socio-economic and institutional-legal attributes of stakeholders were tested as predictors of stakeholder preferences. The major findings include the following. First, non-consumptive forest uses, including ecosystem services, were given highest priority by all stakeholders. Second, consumptive values were weighted more discriminately, while non-consumptive values were viewed more holistically. Third, forest dependence and environmental-resource-entitlements lead to more household consumption-based valuations; whereas, the appreciation of diverse forest values increases with the education of people. Fourth, the stakeholders exercise higher consensus on the importance of non-consumptive uses when such values are evaluated in the context of societal needs but not as household needs; consumptive uses registered the opposite effect. This finding signifies the separation between individual-conscience and social-conscience corresponding with the evaluation of consumer needs and societal needs, respectively. Thus, societal allocations, such as biodiversity conservation or ecosystem services, must be based on valuations specifically formulated in the context of eliciting collective social judgments.