Assessing Preferences for Forest Ecosystem Services Across Europe: Emphasizing Cultural and Recreational Values

European forests deliver diverse ecosystem services, yet increasing human pressures and intensified wood harvest to meet climate and bioeconomy goals risk undermining their multifunctionality. Within the EU-funded ForestNavigator project, we examine how citizens across five EU countries (Czech Republic, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Sweden) perceive trade-offs among forest ecosystem services , with particular attention to cultural and recreational values. These services are typically undervalued due to the absence of market prices and remain underrepresented in analyses, despite EU forest policy objectives that explicitly call for a more balanced consideration of multiple services within sustainable forest management.

We implemented a harmonized multi-country choice experiment (CE) survey with ~5,700 representative respondents, capturing willingness-to-pay (WTP) for forest management scenarios varying in wood harvest, mitigation potentials, protected areas, landscape amenities, and recreational infrastructure.

Key findings on more traditional ecosystem services reveal strong public support for climate mitigation via forest management, with greater WTP for a target more stringent than the EU2030 (€39–€64). Intensive harvesting - especially at 100% of forest regrowth - is broadly disapproved, even at 75% levels. Ambitious conservation, notably strict forest protection at 30%, receives substantial backing (up to +€28 in Ireland and +€26 in Sweden).

Focusing on cultural ecosystem services, nature-oriented recreation links with high value across countries (+€24 to +€29), contrasting with weaker and more variable support for resource-intensive recreation. Preferences for landscape diversity are nuanced; medium diversity often ranks higher than high diversity, with significant appreciation for high diversity in Ireland and the Czech Republic.

WTP varies significantly across demographic groups, with younger, more educated, employed, and higher-income individuals living near forests or urban areas showing higher values. These insights underscore the need for targeted policy communication and investment strategies in forest management.

Our results contribute to integrating cultural ecosystem service values into policy frameworks, integrated and land-use models, enhancing recognition of non-market forest services and informing sustainable forest management that balances climate goals, conservation, and public preferences.