Some problems found in stated preference approaches to environmental valuation are particularly serious in valuing tree disease. Respondents seem to include regulating and supporting service values, which they are ill-qualified to do. Cultural service values for respondents are distorted by the questionnaire itself, making them invalid for the population over whom valuations are aggregated. The element of citizen valuation can be captured in contingent referenda, but this too tends to include inappropriate elements. More reliable benefit estimates are derivable from actual day-to-day purchase of cultural services, transferred to the context of tree disease.