A global dataset of willingness-to-pay values for the conservation of bird and mammal species

Willingness-to-pay (WTP) values for species conservation provide critical information for conservation decisions, as they are indicative of how society values wildlife. Here, we provide a global dataset of 564 primary WTP values for the conservation of 37 bird and 79 mammal species, extracted from 136 studies. This dataset includes information on the valued conservation scenario, relevant aspects of the WTP estimation methodology, characteristics of the respondents, and species characteristics. Thereby, this dataset provides an overview of existing WTP studies for bird and mammal conservation and facilitates gaining insight in commonalities and patterns in WTP values, as well as generating benefit transfer functions to predict WTP values of unstudied species. The following files are available: WTP_data: WTP dataset (.csv). Data extracted from primary studies, including data on WTP values, scientific species name, study location, conservation scenario, information on the methodology, respondent characteristics, and species characteristics. WTP_sources: list of studies from which WTP values are included in our dataset (.docx). WTP_metadata: a detailed description of the information contained in each column in the WTP dataset (.docx).