Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Abstract: Planted forests are increasingly recognised for the provision of habitats for species threatened with extinction. Despite this development, a limited number of empirical studies have been undertaken to estimate the economic value of this ecosystem service. New Zealand's planted forests provide habitat to at least 118 threatened species. These forests can be managed to increase the abundance of many of these species. We present findings from survey data obtained in a discrete choice experiment designed to estimate the non-market values for a proposed biodiversity enhancement programme in New Zealand's planted forests. We used a two-stage modelling process. First we estimated the individual specific willingness to pay values and then we explored their socioeconomic and spatial determinants. The first stage modeling process, which used a random parameters logit model with error components, suggested that willingness to pay was higher for increasing the abundance of native bird than for non-bird species. The second stage model used a least squares panel random-effects regression. Results from this method suggested that socioeconomic characteristics, such as attitudes toward the programme and distance from large planted forests, influenced willingness to pay for biodiversity enhancement.We would like to thank Reviewers 2 and 3 for their additional comments that helped 1 improved the quality of this manuscript. Our responses to their comments are in italics 2 below. 3 4Reviewers' comments: 5 6Reviewer #2: Based on the second revision I would now suggest the manuscript for 7 publication; I have just two minor points: 8 1) You may check whether all references you make are really essential; e.g., concerning 9 the experimental design you have in line 232 in total 7 references. Given the length of the 10 manuscript and as design criteria are not really your topic please consider to reduce the 11 references to those that are really essential for your work 12 13Thank you for this comment. References now reduced to 2. 14 152) Again, I would not insist on dropping the RPL model without error component ( In the set of keywords, we changed "random parameters logit with error components" to 49 "random parameters logit model" 50 51 2. Similarly, the manuscript could be easily shortened by just including Model C. There 52 is nothing to be learned from Model A and B when C is included. The authors want to 53 focus on spatial attributes (see title) so that the inclusion of models A and B ...

We employ an integrated spatial economic model to assess the net private and public benefits of converting marginal agricultural land into forest plantations (afforestation) in New Zealand. For numerous locations, we conduct policy analysis considering the magnitudes of net private and public benefits of land-use changes to determine whether a policy response is justified and, if so, to identify the appropriate policy instruments to encourage adoption of afforestation. Net private benefit is commonly negative, so much so, that in most cases no policy response is justified. However, in certain cases, net private benefits are slightly negative and public benefits are significantly positive justifying the use of positive incentives as the most appropriate policy instrument to encourage afforestation in New Zealand. The most commonly used policy instruments for afforestation in New Zealand, extension and awareness training, are found to be appropriate in only a minority of situations.

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