Nov., 2015
Journal of Resources and Ecology
J. Resour. Ecol. 2015 6 (6) 420-426
DOI:10.5814/j.issn.1674-764x.2015.06.010
www.jorae.cn
Vol.6 No.6
Eco. Compensation
Payments for Ecosystem Services: Market Mechanism or
Diversified Modes?
LIU Yanhong1 and GUO Chaoxian2*
1 Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 102488, China;
2 Institute of Industrial Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 100836, China
Abstract: Payment for ecosystem services is a concept of environmental protection and method of environmental
management that has “purchasing conservation” as a major feature and has grown around the world since the
1990s. It is stressed by the school of environmental economics that as a voluntary mechanism of exchange
between ecological service providers and demanders, payments for ecosystem services can help to increase
inputs and improve efficiency. Ecological economics holds that the ecological system and the complexity of the
policy environment restrict the functional space of market mechanisms. The negative influence of the objective
of giving priority to efficiency on environmental protection and social fairness cannot be neglected; therefore, the
exchange mechanism is just one type of eco-compensation models. Here, we posit that payments for ecosystem
services is a good tool for environmental protection and increases inputs and efficiency. Although payment for
ecosystem services is confronted with challenges in application, it is playing an increasingly important role in the
field of ecological services with a relatively high degree of commodification. Payments for ecosystem services can
also increase the cost effectiveness of publicly managed environmental projects with the cooperation of other policy
tools.
Key words: payments for ecosystem services; market mechanism; diversified modes; environmental economics;
ecological economics
1 Introduction
Appendix: Payments for ecosystem services (PES).
As a tool of environmental management featuring “purchasing
conservation”, payments for ecosystem services (PES,
see Appendix) has rapidly developed around the world,
especially among developing countries, since the 1990s (see
Appendix). According to an all-year search of ISI Web of
Knowledge by Schomers & Matzdorf (2013), the number
of papers on PES was only 41 in 2004 and increased to
457 in May 2011, an increase of 11 times within seven
years. In China, PES is in a narrow sense regarded as a
market-based instrument for ecological compensation (Yu
and Ren 2008) and not enough attention has been paid to
controversies existing within international academia on
the concepts, policy goals and instruments of payments for
ecosystem services. This paper attempts to elaborate upon
the theoretical advantages of PES as a market mechanism
and the restrictions in its application by exploring major
PES can also be referred to as payments for environmental
services. Wunder (2005) believes that environmental services
assume that various services provided by ecological systems are
separable while ecological service emphasizes that ecological
system services cannot be separated. There are no pragmatic
differences between these two definitions. According to
Murandian et al. (2010), ecological services are subordinate
to environmental services as the former mainly refers to the
benefits humans obtain from the ecological system while the
latter also contains benefits from the ecological system with the
active intervention of humans such as green agriculture and rural
landscape. The UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005)
defines ecological service as the human benefits obtained from
ecological systems which can be divided into four functions.
According to practices around the world, PES is focused on four
types including carbon sink, biodiversity protection, watershed
protection and natural landscapes. A detailed exploration of the
relationship between ecological services and environmental
services has been done by Derissen & Latacz-Lohmann (2013).
Received: 2015-10-26 Accepted: 2015-11-18
Foundation: the National Science and Technology Support Program (2013BAC03B05) ; Monographic study of Graduate School of Chinese Academy
of Social Sciences “Research of Eco-Compensation Experience in Developed Countries”.
* Corresponding author: GUO Chaoxian. Email: [email protected].
LIU Yanhong and GUO Chaoxian: Payments for Ecosystem Services: Market Mechanism or Diversified Modes?
disputes between the school of environmental economics
(hereinafter referred to as SENVE) and ecological
economics (hereinafter referred to as SECOE). We believe
this work is conducive to China’s establishment of an ecocivilization and the construction of a diversified system for
ecological compensation in particular.
2 Theoretical advantages of PES
As an innovative measure of environmental management,
PES is different from traditional environmental policy.
An important aspect of PES, compared to environmental
subsidies, is that the former tries to provide a more
direct positive incentive mechanism by establishing the
connection of provider and demander of ecological service,
in which the buyer pays the seller according to the actual
increment of ecological service. Except for the political
environment that accepts market-based policy tools, there
are at least two other reasons for why the incremental
method of environmental management with clear directness
has attracted global attention.
First, under the situation of increasing human populations
and diminishing resources, people have gradually realized
that in order to provide sustainable support for economic
growth and welfare improvements through natural
resources, restriction and reduction of waste of resources
and environmental disruption as well as restoration of
damaged environments are far from enough to meet
requirements. Of further importance is increasing the output
of natural resources and ecological services. As a positive
incentive mechanism with the goal of increasing output,
PES has obvious advantages compared with negative
restriction mechanisms with the target of restricting or
reducing pollution and damage. It tries to increase inputs to
the ecological system while meeting specific demands and
increasing ecological output while improving social welfare
by establishing more direct connections between demander
and supplier of ecological services to realize benign
interactions and win-win outcomes for the environment and
society.
Second, from a positive point of view, although many
countries have intensified input of eco-compensation and
ecological construction, the contradiction between public
input and ecological requirements cannot be alleviated
effectively in a short period of time. Besides, the funding
projects of many governments have multiple policy targets
(for example, environmental protection programs in many
developing countries usually contain other policy targets like
poverty alleviation and employment) and have problems in
project management such as simple compensation standards
and methods and a lack of supervision. However, as a
‘tailored’ mode of environmental protection, PES is closer
to market demands and has higher requirements for output
and supervision of the project, and thus it has advantages in
terms of input and output efficiency.
In other words, PES offers a new idea for solving the
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sustainability of ecological construction when traditional
methods cannot effectively settle the rebuilding of
ecological systems and the problem of sustainability
although they restrict environmental destruction. That is,
PES realizes higher environmental investment efficiency
than the public sector while solving the problem of capital
sources of ecological construction by developing the market
demand of ecological services (payment by the beneficiary).
The two theoretical advantages as well as the possible effect
of poverty alleviation to ecological service provider in
less developed areas will undoubtedly attract the attention
of policy makers. Stated in Developing the Potential for
Payments for Ecosystem Services: an Action Plan which is
the guidance document of the UK government to encourage
the development of PES projects, “Payment for Ecosystem
Services (PES) is about identifying practical ways to deliver
new and additional investment in the natural environment
as well as seeking better targeting and value for money of
existing funding streams” (UK DEFRA 2013).
3 A market instrument and the design
principles
Wunder first proposed a normative definition of PES in a
research report for The Center for International Forestry
Research (CIFOR) in 2005 based on the target of increasing
input and improving efficiency. That is, “A PES scheme,
simply stated, is a voluntary, conditional agreement between
at least one ‘seller’ and one ‘buyer’ over a well-defined
environmental service — or a land use presumed to produce
that service” (Wunder 2005).
This definition not only sets the property of PES
as an exchange mechanism but also regulates that an
efficiency-oriented PES model should have the following
three conditions. (i) A clear trading target, which is the
precondition for the realization of ecological service
exchange. Demanders of ecological services will only have
the willingness of payment or trading under the condition
of value for money. (ii) Voluntary service exchange, that
is, the supplier and demander of ecological services reach
a trade agreement according to voluntary principles.
Voluntary trading not only means that both sides of trading
benefit from it but also ensures that they have the rights to
enter or exit trading when conditions change so as to help
effective allocation of resources. And (iii) conditionality of
compensation payment. The precondition for the supplier
of ecological service to get rewards is that they effectively
offer ecological services according to the agreement. That
is, they provide additional output at the primary level of
ecological service, and the output cannot be mixed with
the legal duty (for example, prohibition of disafforestation)
of ecological service providers. The requirement of
conditioned payment is to overcome the deficiency of
‘going for cultivation and ignoring harvest’ of traditional
environmental subsidy projects and to increase the output
effect of investment.
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The definition on PES given by Wunder shows the
proposition of the property rights on the settlement of
environment externality problems represented by Coase:
external problems can be settled through autonomous
negotiation by relevant parties under certain conditions
(clear definition of property and nearly zero cost of
transaction)(Engel et al. 2008). Wunder acknowledges that
it is difficult to find cases that completely meet the above
three conditions (clearness, voluntary and conditionality)
in existing projects due to restrictions of complexity of
ecological system and economic system. However, he insists
that these three principles not only reflect the feature of PES
different from other environmental policy tools but are also
requirements to ensure maximum benefit of environmental
protection. Therefore, the normative definition functions
as the reference to existing PES projects and helps test its
effectiveness in practice.
4 Limitations and effects of a market
mechanism
The school of environmental economics as represented by
Wunder has defined PES as the market mechanism with
the objective of realizing maximum environmental output
and input. This definition ends the confused situation on the
definition and property of PES theoretically, and provides
clear standards and guiding principles for the operation
of PES projects. PES is thus labeled as market based
instruments, and the three conditions proposed by Wunder
in order to ensure efficiency of environmental protection
have been taken as important bases for judging the design
of existing projects (Wunder et al. 2008).
It can be seen from the operation of global PES projects
that market mechanism advocated by SENVE is only
one of the eco-compensation models and by no means
mainstream. Its non-mainstream position is demonstrated
by two aspects: on one hand, projects that completely
suit the three design principles proposed by Wunder are
extremely rare in the real world; on the other hand, even socalled user-financed programs which are closer to the above
principles do not have universality due to small sizes and
limited cases (Wunder et al. 2008). Research on the types
of PES projects in the world indicates that the number of
PES projects dominated by the government far exceeds that
of PES projects dominated by the market (Coasean model
of PES) (Schomers & Matzdorf 2013). In fact, due to the
particularity and complexity of ecosystems, a great number
of environmental management projects are usually a mixed
model combining the forces of government, market and
local communities (Muradian & Rival 2012).
Based on the gap of theoretical construction by SENVE
and reality of PES, SECOE has put forward various criticisms and advice for the market management principle
solely based on efficiency-oriented policy targets, analyzed
the limitation of simple market mechanisms in application
as well as the possible negative effects of excessive market
Journal of Resources and Ecology Vol.6 No.6, 2015
mechanisms.
4.1 Limitations of market mechanism
According to SECOE, clear property rights and zero (low)
cost of exchange are preconditions for the settlement of
externality problems in the trade of ecological services,
the feasibility of market trading of ecological services will
be greatly restricted in reality as the two preconditions
usually do not exist due to the complexity of ecological and
economic systems.
Farley & Costanza (2010) point out that the physical
property of the ecosystem determines that the great majority
of ecological services provided come from “fund service”
of ecosystems, and thus it has the typical attribute of
public goods. The non-exclusive attribute of public goods
determines that the demander has relatively low willingness
for voluntary payment, and so many supplies of ecological
service can only resort to collective mechanisms like
compulsory tax instead of market mechanisms of voluntary
trading. Even in a few types of ecological service that
suit market mechanisms, such as clean water source and
carbon sink, traders are usually confronted with huge costs
of information caused by uncertainty of ecological service
outputs. In terms of uncertainty, there is not yet solid
scientific foundation for the expected outcome generated
by human intervention on nature, and many causal
relationships are only based on faith rather than science.
Even though there is a causal relationship between human
intervention and environmental results, human efforts
may probably fail due to non-human factors affecting the
environment. For example, although it is generally believed
that increasing forest cover of upper streams will help
maintain the quantity and quality of water downstream,
torrential floods caused by rainstorms seriously contaminate
water quality downstream. Existing uncertainties increase
the decision-making cost and hinder the smooth realization
of exchange (Wunder 2005).
Factors influencing the cost of trading also include
number of people for negotiation, building of trust of
trading partners, execution costs of agreement (conditional
payment usually has the precondition of measureable output
increment while the inalienability of eco-system generates
technical obstacles in the application of the measure
of output increment and supervision of environmental
management, and at the same time, cost of supervision will
be increased).The above factors further increase trading
barriers and the exchange market of ecological services in
reality. Under this situation, intermediate sectors including
the government seem to play an indispensable or sometimes
dominant role in the operation of projects (Muradian et al.
2010).
4.2 Possible negative effects
4.2.1 Influence on environmental protection
Muradian & Rival (2012) point out that market mechanisms
LIU Yanhong and GUO Chaoxian: Payments for Ecosystem Services: Market Mechanism or Diversified Modes?
separate ecological functions with market value such as
clean water and carbon sinks from the ecological system
out of efficiency consideration and commercializes them.
This separation as well as its relevant land and resource
interventions are short-term demands based on market
trading, while the ecological system obviously has its
own rules in providing and restoring various ecological
functions over a long-term process. Therefore, protective
intervention of ecological functions may probably cause
the negative effects of attending to one thing and losing
another and “protecting while destroying”. For example, the
large number of projects of forest protection and restoration
because of the demand of carbon sinks will probably
generate the risk of fire and wipe out previous efforts in a
single day; excessive input in forest ecology may destroy
the structural balance of the whole ecological system.
The crowding-out effect of utilitarian concept of
environmental protection on public awareness of
environmental protection is another manifestation of a
negative effect of the market mechanism. Vatn (2010)
testifies by quoting empirical research results that
economic incentive measures unexpectedly reduce people’s
willingness to support public interest fields including
blood donation, charitable donations and acceptance of
nuclear power equipment. In terms of environmental
protection, research by Zikos (2008) found that publicity of
environmental protection awareness and regulation together
effectively reduced water consumption in Athens from
1989 to 1993; on the contrary, the introduction of price
mechanism afterwards led to the rise of water consumption
markedly. This indicates that price mechanisms, especially
when there is unobvious price fluctuation, has limited
influence on variation of behavior, especially in the rich.
Moral persuasion may be more effective when there is
unobvious marginal income or loss because moral education
encourages people to care about public interest while price
mechanisms guide people to consider individual interests. If
price mechanisms occupy the dominant position in the field
of eco-compensation, unexpected negative effects will be
generated on the environment once capital source interrupts
and people lose their original environmental virtues.
4.2.2 Influence on social fairness
S E N V E s t r e s s e s e ff i c i e n c y - o r i e n t e d c o n c e p t o f
environmental protection for the purpose of improving
efficiency of environmental protection. They consider the
possibility of promoting social fairness by PES under the
precondition of realizing efficiency, and take social fairness
as the by-product in the process of pursuing maximum
environmental output. Therefore, when it comes to social
fairness, they are mainly concerned about whether or
not or how poor people can become effective providers
of ecological services, and partially measure the redistribution and effect of poverty alleviation of PES from
the perspective of income growth. SECOE holds that the
423
utilitarian concept of social fairness has neglected its longterm influence on the distribution of social resources and
structure of rights.
In terms of the long-term influence of efficiency-oriented
model on social fairness, even though the poor involved
in PES projects win in the competition and become more
effective providers of ecological service due to lower
opportunity costs for participating in equal activities of
environmental protection, benefits to them (such as the
increased income) from projects will not necessarily
improve their welfare in the long run. For example, the
Grain for Green program reduces local food supplies and
increases the risk of food safety. Variation in working
methods caused by environmental protection demands
may lead to the degeneration or even loss of non-material
civilizations that cannot be measured by economic value,
such as cultural features of an ethnic group, and its ability
to resist against the outside world by its resources. On the
contrary, poor people who become specialized providers of
ecological services by participating in PES projects may be
locked in this simple mode of production and lose freedom
to choose other land uses and opportunities for development.
If we measure welfare improvement of the individual and
society from the multi-dimensional views of freedom of
selection and diversified modes of life, it is questionable
whether or not the method of poverty alleviation that locks
the poor into providing ecological services can really
generate welfare improvement (Murandian et al. 2010).
In terms of the principle of “the beneficiary pays”
advocated by PES, this leads to the re-distribution of rights
and obligations between different subjects of society or
different countries and regions. The new structure of rights
and obligations may give rise to the result of less developed
regions paying for global public goods (van Hecken &
Bastiaensen 2010). From the perspective of the ecological
service provider, the principle of “the beneficiary pays” has
the precondition of acknowledging that the land steward has
the right of development as well as the right to contaminate
the environment for individual development and meeting
the demand of the market. It not only weakens the internal
impetus to protect the ecological environment and natural
resources, but may assist the practice of destroying the
environment for eco-compensation (Vatn 2010). From the
perspective of ecological service demanders, it is required
by PES that the direct beneficiary of ecological services
pays for basic ecological services such as clean air and water
that are originally obtained for free. It not only deprives the
public’s right to enjoy basic ecological services, but also
exempts the responsibility of environmental protection of
terminal demanders that destroy the environment, such as
demanders of non-environmental luxuries like premium
leather ware and solid wood furniture. From the perspective
of fairness of global right of economic development and
obligation of environmental protection, the “beneficiary
pays principle” advocated by PES may further transfer
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5 Alternative concept frameworks
Given the possible negative effects in environmental
protection and social fairness caused by simple or
excessive application of a market mechanism, although
the market model does not occupy a dominant position in
the application of PES projects, it warrants close attention
and criticisms theoretically. It should be pointed out
that criticism of market mechanisms by the ecological
economics school does not mean total denial of its value;
instead, it is believed that the principle of simple market
management proposed by the environmental economics
school based on the efficiency goal cannot fully cover and
reflect the diversity and complexity of PES mechanism
in operation. Under the situation of various environments
of project implementation, simplified standards not only
go against adaptation to local conditions and institutional
innovation, but tend to mislead projects to some extent.
On the contrary, recognition of diversity and complexity
of ecosystems as well as economic and social systems
will help explain various types of PES projects in reality.
Various models can draw on each other’s strength and strike
a balance among diversified policy goals.
The school of ecological economics has put forward
new conceptual frameworks so as to reflect the diversified
feature of PES in operational mechanisms. For example,
Murandian et al. (2010) posit that as ecological services
involved in PES projects are usually public goods and
the main task of PES should be regulating the behavioral
modes of relevant subjects through incentive mechanisms
so as to better provide public goods. They define PES as “A
transfer of resources between social actors, which aims to
create incentives to align individual and/or collective land
use decisions with the social interest in the management of
natural resources (Murandian et al. 2010)”. PES projects
can be divided into different types according to three
dimensions including degree of importance of economic
incentive, degree of directness of transfer (payment) and
commodified degree of ecological service, covering various
project types from market mechanism playing a role to
more complicated institutional arrangement that is suitable
for public resource management (Fig. 1). According to this
conceptual framework, the market model of PES defined
by Wunder is just one type of PES models. This model
is suitable for ecological service types (such as carbon
sinks) with clear relation of input and output, high degrees
of commodification, incentive mechanisms in the easiest
way, and direct payment mechanisms for compensation.
According to the combination of three indicators, this type
Directness of the transfer is proportional
to the size of the circle
Importance of economic incentives
the obligation of environmental protection to local users
of ecological service; however, terminal demanders that
mainly come from developed countries will escape from
their responsibility of environmental protection while
enjoying cheap goods and services from developing
countries.
Journal of Resources and Ecology Vol.6 No.6, 2015
A
B
C
D
Degree of commodification
Fig. 1 Classification of PES projects based on the degree
of commodification of ecological service, the importance
of economic incentives and the directness of payment
(Murandian et al . 2010).
of project is located in A of Fig. 1.
It is believed by Vatn (2010) that because many PES
projects concern government intervention and public
expenditure, PES should be taken as a concept with wider
extension that contains markets for ecosystem services
(MES). Because the market needs payment mechanisms,
and public sectors or local communities could also make
use of payment mechanisms including revenue, subsidy
or regional compensation. Therefore, it is narrow-minded
for SENVE to equate payment mechanisms of ecological
services to market mechanisms.
Tacconi (2012) offers a conceptual framework on the
basis of combining the views of SENVE and SECOE and
that is wider in coverage than the former and clearer (in
target and method) than the latter. He advocates that “A PES
scheme is a transparent system for the additional provision
of environmental services through conditional payments
to voluntary providers” (Tacconi 2012). This indicates
that the author hopes to increase the cost effectiveness of
environmental input to the largest extent while maintaining
openness and diversity of the system; however, at least
the provider of ecological services should conform to the
voluntary principle in order to realize the above targets
accommodating social fairness, and at the same time, the
principle of conditioned payment should be insisted in
outputs and payments. Tacconi has provided a direction
for future development of PES projects around the world,
especially in developing countries. While most PES projects
still depend on government funding and public management,
policy researchers, makers and executors in the field should
shift the emphasis to(by properly introducing market
mechanisms) improving the cost effectiveness of public
management projects.
6 Conclusion
Eco-compensation is regarded as a two-way incentive
mechanism by academic and policy research circles in
LIU Yanhong and GUO Chaoxian: Payments for Ecosystem Services: Market Mechanism or Diversified Modes?
China, that is, on one hand, environmental destruction
will be reduced by “payment by polluters”, and on the
other hand, ecological protection and construction will
be promoted by “payment by the beneficiary” (Mao et
al. 2002; State Environmental Protection Administration
(SEPA) [2007] No. 130). As a positive incentive mechanism
promoting ecological protection, eco-compensation
functions the same way and has the same functional
mechanism as PES. The eco-compensation mechanism
is defined by SEPA in Instructions on Pilots of Ecocompensation (issued by SEPA [2007] No. 130) as
“environmental economic policy that regulates interests of
relevant parties of ecological environmental protection and
construction by comprehensively using administrative and
market measures based on ecological service value, cost of
ecological protection and cost of development opportunity
with the purpose of protecting ecological environment
and promoting harmony between human and nature”. It
can be seen from this definition that the policy circle’s
view towards eco-compensation is closer to the definition
proposed by Murandian whereby eco-compensation is
taken as a coordination mechanism of multiple interests,
emphasizing diversity of policy goals and implementation
methods.
In terms of practicality, since the implementation of
projects including natural forest protection and Grain for
Green from the end of last century, China has the largest
eco-compensation program in the world, with accumulated
investment in eco-compensation exceeding one trillion
CNY. However, “mechanism of eco-compensation has not
fundamentally established in China”; capital source and
compensation method mainly depend on transfer payment
from state revenue; and there has no diversified methods
of compensation because eco-compensation had a late
start in China. There is great diversity of eco-systems as
well as complex institutional environments, and there
are incomplete knowledge preparation and supporting
systems (Report on Construction of Eco-compensation
Mechanism by the State Council, http://www.npc.gov.cn/
npc/xinwen/2013-04/26/content_1793568.htm). In order
to bring the active role of eco-compensation mechanisms
in promoting ecological civilization construction, two
measures are stressed in exploring diversified methods
of eco-compensation in Decision of the CPC Central
Committee on major issues concerning comprehensively
deepening reform. The first is to build a regional horizontal
system of eco-compensation; the second is to develop
an environmental protection market, promoting systems
of amount of energy saving, carbon emission permits,
dumping rights and water rights transactions, and establish
market mechanisms to attract social capital in ecological
environmental protection (Decision of the CPC Central
Committee on major issues concerning comprehensively
deepening reform, http://www.sn.xinhuanet.com/201311/16/c_118166672.htm). This indicates that in ecological
425
service fields such as water source and carbon sinks with
higher levels of commercialization, equal consultation on
the basis of equality and voluntary trading mechanisms
among various market subjects have become an important
policy tool.
Due to the fact that most ecological services are public
goods and these ecological services mainly start from less
developed regions in central and western China, the pattern
of eco-compensation relying on government funds and
public management will last a relatively long period of
time in China. Empirical studies show that major projects
of ecological restoration in China such as natural forest
protection and Grain for Green have great spaces to improve
environmental protection effects (Yin et al. 2014). We can
learn from the experience of implementing similar national
projects in the agricultural environment in Europe and the
USA. For example, the Conservation Reserve Program
(CRP) which has been carried out since 1985 by United
States Department of Agriculture has significantly improved
environmental protection of the project through methods
such as Environment Benefit Index (EBI) and reverse
auction. In addition, developing countries such as Costa
Rica and Mexico have introduced market elements in order
to improve the management effect of public environmental
projects and this deserves further attention and research.
Although PES is confronted with many restrictions in
application, it is playing an increasingly important role in
the field of ecological services with a relatively high degree
of commercialization. PES can also help improve the cost
effectiveness of publicly managed environmental projects
when cooperating with other policy tools. Theoretical circles
in China should intensify research on relevant theories
and practices at home and abroad so as to provide more
beneficial references to ecological civilization construction
in China, especially the construction of diversified ecocompensation mechanisms.
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生态服务付费：市场机制还是多元模式？
刘艳红1，郭朝先2
1 中国社会科学院研究生院，北京 102488；
2 中国社会科学院工业经济研究所，北京 100836
摘 要：生态服务付费是20世纪90年代在世界各地逐渐兴起的一种以“购买生态服务”为主要特征的环保理念和环境管理
办法。环境经济学派强调生态服务付费，作为生态服务供给者和需求者之间的一种自愿交易机制，有助于增加投入和提高效
率。生态经济学派则认为生态系统自身及政策环境的复杂性不仅会制约市场机制的作用空间，而且不应忽视效率优先目标对环
境保护和社会公平造成的负面影响，因而主张交易机制只是诸多生态补偿模式中的一种。本文认为，生态服务付费作为一种基
于市场的以增加投入、提高效率见长的环保工具，虽然在现实运用中面临较多的制约条件，但其在可商品化程度较高的生态服
务领域的确发挥着越来越重要的作用。在与其他政策工具相配合的情况下，生态服务付费还能帮助提高公共管理环境项目的成
本效益。
关键词：生态服务付费；市场机制；多元模式；环境经济学；生态经济学