A central challenge in assessing the non-use value among populations outside of the region itself, for conserving or avoiding further forest loss in the Amazon, is the lack of relevant willingnessto-pay (WTP) data. While the value of e.g. reduced agricultural yield from degradation of soil fertility, or reduced illness-related expenditures associated with lower air pollution levels, can be estimated using market data, the nature of non-use values precludes this. The only viable way of eliciting such preferences is via survey-based Stated Preference (SP) methods.

Traditionally SP elicitation has involved random population surveys using contingent valuation (CV).<sup>5</sup> Choice experiments (CE) also have become widely applied for environmental valuation over the last 10 years.<sup>6</sup> The CE approach has however already a long history in other fields including transportation analysis, marketing, and psychological research.<sup>7</sup> Our ultimate aim is to apply both CV and CE for elicitation of preferences for Amazon rainforest preservation, in all countries outside of the Amazon region. Ideally, (at least) the entire OECD area plus all higher- and middle-income countries in Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America apart from the Amazon region, would then need to be surveyed. Our realistic aim, given our available resources, is to conduct random sample surveys among national populations in only a few selected European countries, North America, and Japan. If possible, we also aim to do such surveys in some key Amazon region countries (Brazil, Peru and Colombia).

5See Mitchell and Carson (1989), Carson, Flores and Meade (2001), and Carson (2011), for presentations of the CV method. The latter reference contains a comprehensive bibliography. See Carson (1998) for a more specific discussion of CV in the context of rainforest valuation.

> 6 For representative CE studies see Adamowicz et al (1998), Hanley, Wright and Adamowicz (1998), and Louviere, Hensher and Swait (2000). Among prominent, more specific and recent, applications to environmental and resource economics, are Bennett and Blamey (2001), Bateman et al (2002), Holmes and Adamowicz (2004), Rolfe and Bennett (2006), and Bennett and Birol (2010).

> 7 The CE and CV approaches have both relative strengths and weaknesses when used to value environmental goods predominantly non-use values. A main strength of CV is its directness. WTP is typically elicited from respondents through direct valuation questions (either showing a payment card with a range of amounts and asking respondents for their maximum WTP; or through dichotomous choice whereby respondents are asked once or with follow-ups about their maximum WTP, or whether or not they are willing to pay a given stated amount). CE is less direct as maximum WTP is typically found from repeated pairwise choices between alternative programs with different characteristics to respondents including different costs (which usually include a “status quo” program involving zero additional cost).  The choices involve trade-offs between the additional cost,  the  principal good to be valued (in our case the area of rain forest lost); and one or more attributes of the public good in question (or the management of the good) deemed relevant for or related to the choice situation in question. A fundamental tradeoff facing respondents will then involve a monetary payment traded off against the set of other attributes. Each respondent would, during a CE session, face several (4-8) different choice sets where the values for each attribute of the program vary; and from respondents ́ choices, their trade-off and implicit WTP for levels of change in each attribute can be derived.

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