ABSTRACT
Land management often involves balancing tradeoffs between different CES preferences, but most non-monetary methods used in CES assessments do not provide data on relative importance. This chapter presents four methods that can be used to measure CES relative importance and provide quantitative, generalizable data—conventional Q-method, deliberative Q-method, weighting, and ranking. It summarizes how to implement each method and gives examples for application. It also explores the effectiveness of using physical objects to facilitate expression of relative importance for in-person implementation of some of the methods. The authors include evidence from their own empirical research for two of the methods and reflect on what these results mean for the field. The findings indicate that the use of the scoring method might be suitable to assess the relative importance of different facets of complex constructs like CES and relational values. Yet findings also suggest drawbacks to these relative measures, including that this relative importance between CES might often be challenging to measure, or even inappropriate to represent how people conceptualize their relationships with the natural world. These methods have both benefits and drawbacks that should be considered to understand their appropriateness in different contexts.
