Integrated modelling of payment for ecosystem services: using willingness to pay and accept, for nature provision and addressing public management in cultural landscape

We model “Payment for Ecosystem Services” as a public management of biodiversity (BD) provision where citizens and land users have only a limited understanding of the ecology. Ecosystem services (ESS) can be nutrient recycling, pollination, pest control, etc. and they are linked to BD which is the focus of management. A typical problem in nature valuation is that, although there might exist an eventual vehicle for payment (land use), the underlying ecology might be very complex. To solve this problem we suggest an approach in which ecosystem management is conducted by ecologists who possess the knowledge of pertinent functional relationships between species prevalence and ESS provision. Farmers are compensated based on priority setting and suitability of land as a specific acquisition. Valuation (of species) is presented as a simulation (of a market-like process), i.e. balancing value revelations, based on shadow prices of providers (farmers), users (citizens) and ecologists. We address conflicts with ecologists as managers, farmers as profit maximizers, and citizens as utility retrievers. It is primarily a conflict between managers who argue ecologically for preferred species and land users who have limited knowledge: the conflict is solved by balancing interests. Our approach calibrates interest functions and it allows for quasi-market coordination and public management.