SQUARE PEGS AND ROUND HOLES - CAN THE ECONOMIC PARADIGM BE USED TO VALUE THE WILDERNESS

This paper examines whether economic valuation methods are capable of meaningfully measuring the value of the wilderness in monetary terms. Although non-monetary valuation methods are often important in policy making arenas, this paper focuses on monetary methods. Three questions are examined to determine if these economic valuation methods can con tribute to the development of wilderness policy. First, are the valuat ion methods which have been developed by economists capable of express ing in dollar terms the value of all the services which the wilderness supplies? Second, if these valuation methods are not capable of elici ting all the relevant values, are they still useful for public policy purposes? Third, can the valuation methods be modified or can new meth ods be developed which can measure some of the values which have not b een captured by the previously employed methods? The paper reviews exi sting valuation methods according to these criteria and finds that the ability to value the wilderness is limited by the shortcomings of cur rently employed techniques. Refinements to existing methods and potent ial new methods are suggested to further the valuation process.