is retired while his younger wife manages the operation of the farm. It is mostly farmers or
ex-farmers who hold the wooded plots of land rather
than rural
notables: the
Bois de
Bouchereau appears thus as an extension of agri- cultural activity.
4. The valuation enquiry findings
The results of the questionnaire combining quantitative information with ‘in depth’ interview
responses make clear how the ‘price’ of a wood- lot is associated with a transaction whose signifi-
cance is far more than a ‘simple market value’. The answers and explanations offered by the in-
terviewees show how each wood-lot is like a thread in the local social fabric see Boisvert et al.,
1998.
4
.
1
. Unwillingness-to-accept In general, the participants found it extremely
difficult to imagine themselves in a position where
Table 1 The Bois de Bouchereau WTA questionnaire
a
Methodological commentary Survey question
1. Who currently uses the plot which you
The first question concerns the current user of the plot and the corresponding uses.
possess? For what uses woodcutting firewood, walks, hunting, picking daffodils or
mushrooms…? 2.
Have you already thought of selling your The second question raised the problem of the eventual sale of the plots,
mentioning also the possibility of giving itthem up in an inter vivos plots? To give itthem up inheritance,
transmission…? If yes According to what transfer or a legacy. Above all this question enabled us to test the
attitude of the participants regarding the eventual sale of the plot. modalities?
The third question placed the enquiry in the hypothesis of a sale, even if 3.
In the case of a sale, what would be, according to you, the price that you could
the participant had declared himself to be unwilling to sell. The aim was to make the owner reveal the price he considered as being realistic for
ask? What price, according to you, could you such plots. This question made a distinction between the price ‘you
expect to obtain? might ask for’ and ‘the price you might obtain’ in an attempt to see if
the participants were aware that these two values may differ. The fourth question, attempted to elucidate the conditions in which an
4. In what circumstances might you sell?
owner might find himself in a sale situation. The fifth question attempted to discover whether the identity or the origin
5. To who would you be ready to sell?
of the buyer of the plot was important for the eventual seller, or whether the seller was indifferent to the identity of the buyer.
6. Do you know how much property tax you
The sixth and seventh questions concerned property tax relating to the plots. They gave an inconclusive result because there turned out to be
pay for your plots? non-taxation of parcels in the Bois de Bouchereau.
7. What does this sum represent, according to
you, compared to the value of your plot? The two final questions were of a more prospective nature, asking the
8. How do you see the Bois de Bouchereau in
50 years? interviewees to envisage the Bois in, say 50 years and exploring whether
it was considered possible, probable, andor desirable for the bois de Bouchereau to be managed by people other than the current owners.
9. Do you think that people other than its
current owners may eventually manage the Bois de Bouchereau?
a
Adapted from Boisvert et al. 1998.
Fig. 1. Age of participants.
would be prepared to sell are those who are indifferent to the wood because they do not live in
it’s immediate vicinity and therefore no longer have the opportunity to visit it. When this disin-
terest becomes absolute, the owner is often no longer known or identifiable, and any transaction
with local potential buyers becomes difficult to obtain.
In sum, the parcels of forest are very strongly perceived, individually and collectively, as ele-
ments of familial heritage, inherited from previous generations and passed on future generations.
This fact on its own explains the scarcity of sales. The sense of ‘heritage’ is so strong that recent
buyers of parcels typically adopt the same atti- tudes about the permanence of the ‘patrimony’.
4
.
2
. The price of a wood-lot When the question of the price of a plot was
raised, the first element of comparison put for- ward by the participants is cultivatable land. In
comparison, wood-lots in the Bois de Bouchereau are perceived as having little value. Half the par-
ticipants had no difficulty whatsoever in giving us a price, always expressed spontaneously in terms
of a value per hectare, and not in terms of the value of their own particular plot. What we have
here is a transaction price, known or expected by the owners, and readily revealed to us.
The price figures were often given in the form of a price range. According to the participants,
several factors can play a role in determining this range. The first is the date of the next cut: if the
they would sell their plots. Three participants appeared indifferent 4, and only six 11
envisaged the possibility of selling. The rest 85 refused to sell, with varying degrees of vehemence
— outright refusal to sell in the case of 43 people 79 of participants. Five owners declared them-
selves as recentpotential buyers.
It was generally felt that any talk of selling was indeed, hypothetical. The low number of transac-
tions noted concerning the wooded plots, which are far less frequent than those concerning agri-
cultural land, confirms this. Current transactions concern the resolution of an inheritance, an es-
cape from joint ownership, or internal transac- tions within families which wish the wood to
remain in the family patrimony.
Given the general refusal to sell, the estimation of certain people is explicitly based on the price
they paid for plots perhaps several decades ago, a price which they try and bring up to date with
varying degrees of success. The rare owners who
Fig. 2. Distribution of surface area possessed by the participating owners based on their statements.
Fig. 3. Price of a wood-lot.
wood of the plot is ‘ready for cutting’, the plot is worth more than if it had just been cut. The
second is the existence of a specific individual request, coming for example from a neighbour
who wishes to acquire an adjacent plot or a hunter who wishes to benefit from hunting rights
linked to land ownership. In these cases the price of the plot can rise. A third factor might be the
‘good quality’ of the plot, but this was not given great importance by the respondents. This quality
is more likely to be translated into a shortening of the cut rotation periods.
If we retain the values explicitly given to plots whose wood is ‘ready for cutting’, the distribution
is as shown in Fig. 3. There was one very high value of 250 000 – 300 000 FF per hectare, this is
probably due to a confusion by a factor of 10 between old and new francs. We leave this ‘out-
lier’ price aside.
The person who gave the highest base value 25 000 FF in his price range also gave the
highest value of 52 000 FF for a ‘very very good wood’. Ten thousand French Francs per
hectare is the value given by the greatest number 13 persons of participants giving a pre-
cise figure, though the average of all replies of a single figure is somewhat higher, at 15 720 FF per
hectare.
These figures can be compared with the price range given over the telephone by notary offices
in the region. The office of Puiseaux evaluated the current price of wooded plots in the region at
between 10 000 and 15 000 FF per hectare; the office of Beaumont en Gaˆtinais gave an estimate
of between 8 000 and 20 000 FF per hectare. So the price ranges provided by the participants ap-
pear to be realistic in the sense that they corre- spond closely to what we might call, for want of a
better expression, a ‘state of the market’ for wooded plots.
What is the significance of such a price? Does this money value of the wooded plot represent an
asset value? Let us consider the total revenue that might be obtained from a wood-lot. A plot of
woodland is cut, on average, every 50 years. By using the known market price of firewood, we can
estimate the internal rate of return of the asset that a plot in the Bois de Bouchereau assures.
According to our survey participants, the maxi- mum price for a plot that has just been cut is
5 000 FF per hectare. A complete cut yields a maximum of about 260 steres per hectare, and the
current firewood price is 200 FF per stere. On this basis, expected revenue for a just cut plot is
52 000 FF at 50 years hence. Thus, for an initial expenditure of 5 000 FF and a revenue of 52 000
FF in 50 years, we obtain the internal rate of return as the solution to:
52 0001 + r50 = 5000
this yielding an internal rate of return of r = 4,8. These figures do not consider the variable
costs associated with harvesting, etc., of the wood. In comparison with other investment op-
portunities it is evident that, with such an internal rate of return exclusive of management and har-
vesting costs and with such a long-term commit- ment, the holding of wood is not, in itself,
economically very profitable.
4
.
3
. What is behind the wood-lot price
?
So, what drives individuals to hold on to wood- lots and, furthermore, to declare that outside of
heritage context they will not sell them? It seems highly probable that the price of a plot reflects
elements other than a simple commercial asset value. The specific circumstances of each wood-lot
transaction family transmission, consolidation of holding by local proprietors, departure of a family
from the district highlight the social relationships this community keeps up with and through this
forest, thus referring back to the specific social norms, individual and collective attitudes that sus-
tain and constitute the value. The survey-inter- view process has revealed how the ownership of
parcels goes hand-in-hand with a particular knowledge, which extends from the historical and
the folkloric through to knowledge of the exact territorial limits of the different wood-lots and the
specific techniques of exploitation. This suggests that:
on the one hand, the price expresses something more than a capitalised ‘market value’ for the
wood. The price may in part reflect elements which, according to an enlarged concept of
‘economic value’, go beyond the value related to the exploitation of firewood, such as ‘recre-
ational value’ and a legacybequest-type asset value cf. the notion of ‘total economic value’
developed by environmental economists such as Pearce and Turner, 1990;
on the other hand, an actual or envisaged market price of a wood-lot cannot, even with
an enlarged concept of economic value, convey fully the dimensions of the value read: signifi-
cance accorded to the parcels of forest. Our interview-survey process has enabled us to
reveal, through the words of the participants, a variety of qualitative elements of use, social inter-
action and meaning that each play a role in the overall value of the wood. Cumulatively, we ar-
rive at a picture of the social processes at work in the relationship of the community with the wood,
the social norms and the individual and collective attitudes which concern the wood and contribute
to the determination of its value. The representa- tions that local inhabitants make of the wood —
a part of family heritage, a source of collective or private use, an object of knowledge, a place of
memory, etc. — all testify to the many dimen- sions of social processes that develop concerning
the wood, and which are transmitted from genera- tion to generation.
4
.
4
. Stages in the re-constitution of 6alue We can highlight both the sequence of the
stages of the enquiry process and the sense of the different influences of the representations and of
the social processes on the price, through a dia- gram with multiple levels see Fig. 4. Three major
levels can be distinguished:
At the top of the pyramid the market price is represented, such as it was revealed by the
participating owners. This price represents a quantified element as provided by the enquiry.
The price appears to be a ‘tip of the iceberg’ for the complex social dimensions of value that
the in-depth interviews were able to define more clearly.
At the bottom of the pyramid various elements are indicated, such as private andor collective
use, individual andor community behaviour as well as psycho-sociological characteristics and
the representations grouped under the title: MemoryKnowledge and Affective links. This
level represents the sphere of social and cogni- tive processes linked to value.
Between price and the underlying social-cogni- tive dimension, we insert a level for ‘interpreta-
tive’ filters that represent various categories such as existence value, aesthetic andor land-
scape value, patrimony value and asset value. These diverse facets of value, which refer to
categories commonly used in economic analysis of elements of natural capital, are seen to be
fed by different elements from the underlying social processes level. Their inclusion works to
‘account for’ the gap between the revealed wood-lot price and the pure asset value relying
on commercial wood recovery alone. The dif- ference between the right-hand side elements
and the left-hand side elements is between ‘market-like’ and non-market elements — on
the right the ‘asset value’ and ‘patrimony value’ elements have a clear relation to a money
transaction, whereas on the left the ‘existence value’ and ‘aestheticlandscape value’ elements
have an essentially non-market character.
The methodological significance of the diagram is that, starting from an explicit element, namely,
the price for wood-lots as provided by the en- quiry, the learning during the in-depth interviews
about the social processes at work on the wood allows a fuller understanding of the nature and
the components of the value attributed to the woodland and renewedtransmitted through the
woodland. As suggested by the middle layer of Fig. 4, it is possible — with a bit of artifice — to
summarise some of the valuation findings in terms of conventionally applied categories of economic
environmental valuation. Thus
There is economic ‘use value’ of the wood as fuel though many locals currently use electric
home heating, and there is an economic value, to a lesser degree, for the wood as timber.
Perhaps also there is a genuine economic and not just lifestyle value of the food items to be
found in the forest, though this would now be of minor significance.
The hunt may be said to be a ‘recreational value’ perhaps quantifiable — though we have
not sought to validate this hypothesis — in terms of other opportunities foregone and the
travel costs involved.
The dimensions of ‘patrimony value’ some- times called a ‘bequest value’ and also of
‘aesthetic or landscape value’ are clearly per- ceived by the local people. Owners of wood-
lots living in the district take some considerable collective pride in the existence and mainte-
nance of the forest, and ownership is an impor- tant factor of social identification for the
community of inhabitants.
Fig. 4. The Bois de Bouchereau: for market price to the various components of the value.
Table 2 Principal uses according to owners total of is higher than
100 Woodland use
Number of users Firewood
43 78 of participants Walking
36 65.5 of participants 33 60 of participants
Daffodils 4 7 of participants
Lily of the valley Mushrooms
3 5.5 of participants
and the plots form an integral part of family patrimony. The family lines go directly back to
parents and grandparents … and to great grand parents …; and this continuity is considered in-
deed to guarantee the permanent existence of the wood. There may also be a wider family clan,
with cousins and nephews this is more difficult to verify systematically. But in this case too, the
wood must ‘stay within the family’, and eventu- ally an internal family transaction often allows
this to happen.
5
.
2
. The rural mentality and tradition of accumulation
The patrimonial character of wooded plot is reinforced by traditional rural attitudes concern-
ing the possession of land, which consists of accu- mulating as many plots as possible without ever
selling any. This helps explain why recent buyers have the same tendency to hold on to their plots
as those whose plots have been in the family for generations. These two elements — the emotional
character of wanting to keep the wood in the family, and the rural tendency to want to accumu-
late productive agricultural land as well as woods — further account for the existence of the
patrimonial value.
5
.
3
. Essentially non-market uses The wood’s uses, according to the owners we
met, are divided between a principal use — the collection of firewood — and two secondary uses:
visiting the wood be it for walking or to relax or pick flowers or mushrooms and hunting see
Table 2.
The provision of firewood for the family is, without doubt, the most common use of the
wood, stated by 78 of those who responded to the enquiry. It is the only real ‘private’ use of the
wood. Cutting is done on the plot or plots pos- sessed. Any crossing of boundaries during cutting
is a source of conflict, which must be resolved by the intervention of a third person; for example, an
older person who will come to the plot to verify plot boundaries. The wood cut is not commer-
By contrast, this is not a question of ‘intrinsic value’ such as the variety and robustness of
species independent of human perception or utilisation; rather the study has documented
the human appreciation of the richness of the forest life forms.
What emerges from the enquiry as a whole is that there is only a weak linkage between the price
of a wood-lot at the moment of its transmission from a former to a new owner, and the economic
‘use values’ associated with it. Some survey re- spondents did remark that a high timber quality
of mature standing trees would be reflected in a higher transaction price. But this is relatively inci-
dental. For the most part, both the ‘use values’ and the ‘non-use values’ notably bequest are
outside the monetary domain. These non-market values as well as the mostly non-market labours
of wood-lot tending and other maintenance are inseparable from the tissue of a customary way of
life.
5. The non-market dimensions of the woodland value
