Social preferences towards ecosystem services provided by cloud forests in the neotropics: implications for conservation strategies

Despite the importance of neotropical cloud forestsas providers of ecosystem servicesto society, they are one of the most threatened ecosystemsin the world. We analysed the importance of three cloud forestreserves in central Colombia as providers of ecosystem services, as well as the social support to conservation actions in these ecosystemsthrough willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to give up time (WTT) estimates. Our results highlight the high commitment of all users of the cloud forestareas towards the conservation of the ecosystem servicesprovided by these strategic ecosystems. We found that the most important perceived ecosystem serviceswere water supply and habitat maintenance for species. Our findings also suggest that the respondents’ ecological knowledge (measured as the awareness of the ecosystem servicessupplied by cloud forests) was an important factor in determining both WTP and WTT for conserving cloud forests. Moreover, our results indicate that WTT should be a viable technique to explore individual preferences of different stakeholders towards conservation activities in cloud forests. Based on our results, we propose a conservation strategy of cloud foreststhat considers different users’ socio-economic and environmental characteristics, in which both experimental and experiential knowledgeshould be incorporated in order to promote collective action.