Incorporating Market and Nonmarket Values into Regional Planning for Rural Development

Planning in rural resource-dependent regions increasingly involvesfinding the appropriate balance between market and nonmarket land uses. In the case offorest-dependent regions, the controversyfocuses on the use of private and publicforest lands for a combination of extractive and tourism-related activities. Timber management and harvesting constitute the extractive dimension, whereas the alternative dimension includes such activities as huntingfishing, camping, and simple aesthetic enjoyment. The intrinsic difficulty associated with this searchfor balance can be traced to the measurement criteria for costs and benefits, which easily accommodate market uses, but not nonmarket uses such as tourism-related activities. Thus, a principal planning challenge is to incorporate into the analysis a more comprehensive accounting of costs and benefits so that the social welfare impacts of a particular rural development strategy can be more completely understood.