ABSTRACT
The range of resource value concepts recognized by economists has been considerably expanded. Traditionally, it was those values recorded from exchange of resource commodities in the marketplace that were recognized as legitimate measures of economic value. Direct demands for insitu resources were recognized and estimated. Individuals engage in activities because they derive satisfaction from them. In economics a state of satisfaction is described by a utility function in which the activities are arguments within the function. When the arguments are assigned specific values, a level of utility or satisfaction is defined by the function. The literature conveyed the impression that option and existence values were rather specialized phenom ena, confined to unique natural objects threatened with irreversible destruction at the hands of humankind. B. A. Weisbrod assigned a key role to irreversibility in his conceptualization of option demand, while J. V. Krutilla argued that irreversibility and uniqueness were both essential to existence value.
