Social valuation of ecosystem services and public policy alternatives is one of the greatest challenges facing ecological economists today. Frameworks for valuing nature increasingly include shared/social values as a distinct category of values. However, the nature of shared/social values, as well as their relationship to other values, has not yet been clearly established and empirical evidence about the importance of shared/social values for valuation of ecosystem services is lacking. To help address these theoretical and empirical limitations, this paper outlines a framework of shared/social values across five dimensions: value concept, provider, intention, scale, and elicitation process. Along these dimensions we identify seven main, non-mutually exclusive types of shared values: transcendental, cultural/societal, communal, group, deliberated and other-regarding values, and value to society. Using a case study of a recent controversial policy on forest ownership in England, we conceptualise the dynamic interplay between shared/social and individual values. The way in which social value is assessed in neoclassical economics is discussed and critiqued, followed by consideration of the relation between shared/social values and Total Economic Value, and a review of deliberative and non-monetary methods for assessing shared/social values. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of shared/social values for decision-making

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ABSTRACT1. Coastal sand dunes are widespread worldwide, including around the coasts of the British Isles and Europe, providing a wide range of functions some of which are recognized for their socio-economic benefits.2. In some localities, their contribution to coastal defence and to tourism and regional character have been acknowledged in local plans, but this is far from ubiquitous.3. A rapid assessment was undertaken of the range of ecosystem services provided by coastal sand dune systems, using the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment ecosystem services classification augmented with habitatand locally-appropriate additions.4. Sand dunes were shown to provide a wide range of provisioning, regulatory, cultural and supporting services, many of which remain substantially overlooked.5. Although the importance of coastal sand dune for a diversity of characteristic and often rare organisms from a variety of taxa has been addressed, many of the broader ecosystem services that these habitats provide to society have been overlooked. This suggests that coastal sand dune systems are neglected ecosystems of significant and often under-appreciated societal value.

Ecosystem services conceptualise the diverse values that ecosystems provide to humanity. This was recognised in the United Kingdom's National Ecosystem Assessment, which noted that appreciation of the full value of ecosystem services requires recognition of values that are shared. By operationalising the shared values concept, it is argued that the contribution of ecosystem services to human well-being can be represented more holistically. This paper considers current understanding of shared values and develops a new metanarrative of shared values beyond the aggregated utilities of individuals. This metanarrative seeks to conceptualise how values can be held both individually and communally, and what this means for identifying their scale and means of enumeration. The paper poses a new reading of the individual values with the formation and expression of shared social values. The implication is that shared values need to be conceived as normative constructs that are derived through social processes of value formation and expression. Shared values thus do not necessarily exist a priori; they can be deliberated through formal and informal processes through which individuals can separate their own preferences from a broader metanarrative about what values ought to be shared.idea of shared values that reconciles the elicitation of preforme