Abstract
Exposure to nature yields a wide range of mental health benefits. Improvements in mental health have substantial economic value, through: reduced mental healthcare costs; improved workplace productivity; and reduced costs of antisocial behaviour, both public and private. These economic gains represent an unquantified ecosystem service attributable to conservation. Since most individual people, and hence most politicians and policy-makers, care more about the private good of individual health than the public good of ecosystem and biodiversity conservation, calculating the economic value of nature via its contributions to human mental health could prove influential in achieving conservation goals. Here we review relevant literature, establish a framework for these calculations, and identify immediate information gaps and research priorities. Current estimates rely on assumptions, but are similar in scale to those from tourism and recreation, which do influence policy.
Highlights
Conserving nature requires human actions and decisions, influenced by political systems
We propose that parks have an economic value attributable to visitors’ mental health improvements
We recognize the limitations of such approaches, but since they are in common use, we argue that they should include values associated with human mental health
Summary
Conserving nature requires human actions and decisions, influenced by political systems. Economic values of conservation include: those which accrue to individuals whether or not they visit protected areas; and those which accrue only to individuals who use protected areas directly The former have been analyzed largely as ecosystem services (Costanza et al, 1997; Balmford et al, 2002; De Groot et al, 2012; Fenichel et al, 2016), estimated at US$145 trillion worldwide in 2011 (Costanza et al, 2014). Economic valuations can be reached either through market processes, or outside them They exert considerable influence on political decisions, notably allocation of land and water between competing uses (Morrison, 2015; Newbold et al, 2016). We recognize the limitations of such approaches, but since they are in common use, we argue that they should include values associated with human mental health
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