Economic valuation of wildlife conservation

This paper reviews concepts and methods for the economic valuation of nature in the context of wildlife conservation and questions them in light of alternative approaches based on deliberation. Economic valuations have been used to set priorities, consider opportunity costs, assess co-benefits of conservation, support the case for conservation in public awareness and advocacy, and drive novel schemes to change incentives. We discuss the foundational principles of mainstream economic valuation in terms of its assumptions about values, markets, and human behaviour; propose a list of valuation studies in relation to wildlife protection; and explain the methods used. We then review critiques of these approaches focusing on the narrow way in which economics conceives of values, and institutional, power, and equity concerns. Finally, we complement conventional approaches commonly used for wildlife valuation with two forms of deliberative valuation: deliberated preferences and deliberative democratic monetary valuation. These are discussed in terms of their potential to address the drawbacks of mainstream economics and to realise the potential of valuation in bridging conservation of nature for its own sake and its important contributions to human well-being. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10344-023-01658-2.