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Abstract
Recent interest by environmental economists in landscape valuation has
reopened a debate from the 1960s and 1970s concerning subjective
(holistic) and objective (components-based) approaches to landscape
assessment and their relative strengths and weaknesses. Contingent
valuation seeks the required holistic value, but limits benefit transfer;
besides, there are unresolved strategic and hypothetical biases. Hedonic
pricing and choice experiments, by their components orientation, partly
resolve these problems. Field exercises have shown that subjective
valuations are as consistent and explicable as objective ones. Componentsbased
approaches covertly require subjective judgement, and fail to account
for crucial interactions of components in determining landscape quality. A
combination of holistic and subjective assessment of landscape quality with
objective measurement of willingness to pay for quality is the best means to
assess the effect of trees on landscape value.