Abstract

Stated preference approaches, such as contingent valuation and choice experiments, focus mainly on the estimation of the mean or median willingness to pay for an environmental good. Nevertheless, these two welfare measures may not be appropriate when there are social and political concerns associated with implementing a payment for an environmental services scheme. In this paper, we showed how to estimate and use other quantiles of the willingness-to-pay distribution. We then applied our method to analyze the economic value of the hydrological ecosystem services provided by the Bolivian sub-Andean humid forest. Our focus groups, pilot surveys and final estimates consistently showed that people internalized the socio-political trade-off presented in the payment for an environmental services exercise. While people showed a positive willingness to support the program for the conservation of the hydrological ecosystem services, at the same time, they looked for values that account for the fact that the project’s success would require a significantly high proportion of people willing to pay for this program. Therefore, it is advisable to use other quantiles to estimate the willingness to pay for PES programs.