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Titre de la thèse

The Price of Nature: Public Preferences and Market Integrity in Ecosystem Service Markets.

My research evaluates the viability of market-based instruments for forest ecosystem services. It’s a quest to align what society wants from forests with the physical and economic realities of their supply. The thesis unfolds in three interconnected parts. First, I innovate in choice modeling, combining econometrics and machine learning to estimate public willingness-to-pay (WTP) and map preference heterogeneity. This gives us a granular view of the demand side. Second, I tackle core supply-side failures—specifically additionality, impermanence, and leakage—by designing a risk-adjusted framework for forest-carbon finance. This mechanism ensures credited services are scientifically credible and economically consistent. Finally, I investigate the governance choice itself: Do people prefer markets or traditional government regulation? I analyse how public trust and perceived efficiency influence this crucial decision. Ultimately, this work provides an integrated analysis that links demand-side valuation to supply-side integrity, offering a comprehensive framework to assess whether, and under what conditions, nature markets are a suitable policy tool.

Environmental Policy, Payments for Ecosystem Services, Climate Change, Stated Preferences Assessment, Choice Modelling, Environmental Impact Assessment

Highly Commended Paper Award, University of Leeds, Issued for the working paper: Polarised preferences for carbon capture, biodiversity conservation and recreation in forests. A mixed methods approach, presented at the 8th Workshop on Non-Market Valuation (WONV) conference in Leeds, UK