Authors: Giergiczny, Marek; Jacobsen, Jette;Glenk, Klaus;Meyerhoff, Jurgen ;

The economic value of goods and services provided to the societies by forests depends on how forests are managed. On a European scale, forests are diverse and managed in many ways. Yet, there has been no large-scale assessment of the economic value of forests recreation across Europe. In this paper we systematically apply preference-based valuation methods to investigate public preferences for forest visits in ten European countries. We observe substantial recreational value measured by the consumer surplus. Compared to the gross value added of forestry and timber production, gross recreational benefits are, except for Belarus, on par or larger. Additionally, using stated preference methodology we find that more diverse forest structure with taller trees, a larger number of mixed tree species, higher variation in tree layers, and larger amounts of deadwood yield, on average, higher recreational values. This implies that managing forests to promote recreational values may generate significant synergies with biodiversity conservation. The results of our study provide a robust basis for evaluating the societal consequences of future forest management policies and can form a basis for integrating forest recreational values into ecosystem service models for European forests. An example of such analysis is performed for Poland.