Socio-economic dataset on household use and valuation of xerophilous thickets ecosystem services in southwestern Madagascar

This dataset contains household survey data collected in two communes of southwestern Madagascar, Soalara-Sud and Andranohinaly, on the use of resources from xerophytic thickets and on household livelihoods. Data were collected in 2025 with a structured questionnaire implemented in KoboToolbox. It covers 260 households that use thicket resources (168 in Andranohinaly, 92 in Soalara-Sud) and 1,020 resource use records. Household-level variables include commune and fokontany, household size, primary and secondary activity, declared monthly income, number of resources used, and the value of self-consumed harvests at substitution cost. Record-level variables include frequency of use, quantity harvested, unit price, use (sold, partly sold or self-consumed), income obtained and perceived importance, from which the perceived utility, frequency of use and income contribution indicators used for the multi-criteria ranking are derived. Each resource is also classified by ecosystem service category and nutritional role. The 15 interviewed households that reported no use of thicket resources are not included. The deposit contains the cleaned data files, the script documenting the cleaning steps, and the R scripts that reproduce all tables of the associated manuscript: descriptive statistics and tests (Tables 1 and 2), Poisson models of resource dependence with sensitivity analyses (Table 3) and AHP prioritisation of resources (Table 4). Scripts were run under R 4.3.3. See README.md. Version 2 replaces the previous deposit: duplicate records were removed, three households were checked against the paper questionnaires, and the scripts were extended to cover every reported analysis.