The underlying notion of payments for environmental services is that beneficiaries of environmental services (directly or indirectly) financially support their provision by covering at least part of the costs landowners incur to generate them. This so-called “beneficiary-pay principle” is a widely accepted concept in theory, the legitimacy of which nevertheless has not yet been challenged in practice. In our
study, we conducted an extensive survey in five European countries – Finland, Denmark, Poland, Italy and Spain – with the aim to explore citizens’ opinions of who should carry the costs of ecosystem services provision. The ecosystem services in question were biodiversity, recreation, carbon sequestration, water quality, and scenic beauty. Our results show that the majority of respondents in all studied countries generally think that the costs of enhanced provision of ecosystem services shall be borne by the public administration, rather than by the direct beneficiaries of these services or by the forest owners. However, there is a clear tendency to accept that users shall pay for improved ecosystem service provision in case of local ecosystem services (such as e.g. water quality) or those that have a strong direct use component (e.g. recreation). Moreover, the respondents in generally accept that forest owners shall be compensated for the
enhanced provision of ecosystem services, and only a small percentage of them thinks that forest owners should bear all the additional costs related to such provision.