There remains, however, the problem of the freight of interpretation riding with every objectively described characteristic. Moreover, a particular species may have symbolic significance, representing the value of all biodiversity conservation. These factors are clearly potent and troublesome for passive use values option, existence and vicarious values consumed in the mind rather than through the senses. The symbolic response is clearly manifested, when respondents express willingness to pay to preserve even species which, according to post-CVM questioning, they suspected to be fictitious. There is nothing faked or perverse about these responses, but they are hard for researchers to track.
People don t want biodiversity loss, and any act of species extinction is biodiversity loss.
These problems by no means suggest that we should abandon these new and intellectually intriguing products, returning exclusively to traditional forest economics. Ill-specified products will be traded off one way or another, and arguably economics offers the most dispassionate approach to their evaluation. But now and again we should devote some time to asking what, precisely, it is that we are measuring.