Meteorological services involve the provision of information on the state of the atmosphere and the ground surface. They provide data, information, forecasts and various related products, which are important for the smooth functioning of many aspects of the economy, government and society. The economic value or benefit of weather forecasts consists in generally improving financial and related outcomes resulting from the use of such forecasts. The merit of meteorological services cannot directly be deduced from the consumption of services. Rather, it emerges from the improvement of decisions made by economic stakeholders thanks to weather-related information. This is the first empirical study on this topic for Switzerland which includes economic data from interviewed users. The results show that the use of meteorology in the road transportation sector in Switzerland generates an economic benefit to the national economy of 65.7-79.77 million Swiss francs (1 Swiss franc ∼0.90 ¤, 1.20 US$ as of August 2011). In relation to its budget the overall benefit to the national meteorological service might be several times that amount, considering that many other economic sectors such as agriculture, aviation, construction, energy, media and tourism were not included in this study. Furthermore, climate services were not taken into account in this study and, therefore, the economic benefit for the road traffic sector alone might in fact be even higher.

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Willingness to pay for forest management activities fostering biodiversity In the course of a Swiss research project, the people's valuation of forest management activities fostering biodiversity was evaluated. To do so, a willingness to pay approach was chosen and a choice experiment (a special kind of opinion survey) was carried out. The results show that people accept a slightly higher tax burden to finance forest management activities which foster biodiversity. However, not all aspects of biodiversity are valued the same: the promotion of genetic diversity within forest tree populations, which is rather important from a biological point of view, was not appreciated at all by the respondents, whereas the promotion of endangered animal and tree species and the promotion of vegetation left in its natural state were rather highly valued. The willingness to pay for the promotion of forest biodiversity amounts to about 40 to 80 Swiss francs per year and household. Projected on the total Swiss population, the willingness to pay adds up to 140 to 270 mio. Swiss francs per year. In the political decision-making process willingness to pay measures for different forest management activities can provide valuable arguments and be an indicator for the feasibility of measures and projects.

Swiss forest recreation: monetary value and influencing factors The monetary value of forest recreation and its influencing factors have been evaluated in a recent research project for the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). The study is based on an extensive survey which was conducted during the second Swiss Forest Monitoring (WaMos 2) in 2012. It uses the expenditure method, a simplified version of the travel cost method, to compute the monetary value of forest recreation. This value is estimated at 290 to 589 CHF per person and year. For Switzerland's population of the over 18-years old the value sums up to between 1.9 and 3.9 billion CHF per year. Further, the authors examined whether and to which extent the value attributed to forest recreation can be explained by the visitor's socio-economic and personal characteristics, the activities performed in the forest, the motives leading to the visit, and by the percieved characteristics of the forest. This was done by using econometric analysis and led to the result that the value of forest recreation is mostly determined by the distance between visitors' residences and the forest, the possibilities for substitution and visitors' socio-economic and personal characteristics. The properties of the forest itself, except for infrastructure, seem to have no decisive influence for the interviewees.

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