We carried out economic valuation of the recreation role of forests on two locations of urban forests in Ljubljana, Rožnik with Šišenski hrib and Golovec, and demonstrated the implementation of valuation within forest management and sylviculture planning. Questionnaire, designed upon discrete choice method served as a basis for surveying a representative sample of Ljubljana%s citizens: 262 for the first location and 263 for the second one. We used a latent class model to estimate willingness-to-pay measures for the changes of the selected attributes of recreational use of forest for each location: outstanding trees, forest openings, waymarks and information boards, paved walking and jogging trails. Both models exhibit heterogeneity of respondents% preferences; in case of Rožnik they segment into 4 classes and into 2 classes in case of Golovec. Willingness-to-pay for favourable combination of recreation attributes was expressed by 75.6 % of respondents for Rožnik and 67.7 % for Golovec. We defined hypothetical scenarios of attribute changes, aggregated willingness-to-pay measures on a level of the overall population and calculated the consumer surplus for each scenario. Optimal scenario with the highest value of consumer surplus, in case of Golovec, suggests an increase in abundance of outstanding trees from 6 % to 18 %, increase in the area of forest openings from 0.5 % to 2.3 %, retaining the current length of paved walking trails at 14 km, and maintenance of waymarks and information boards. Optimal scenario for Rožnik is similar, except that the suggested increase in area of forest openings is to reach 3.5 % and the length of paved walking trails is to be retained at the current 28 km. Valuation results can be used for categorisation of areas according to recreational importance, for defining the optimal management regime and, for establishing a detailed plan for implementation of the scenarios.
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