Societal willingness to pay for wild food conservation in Italy: Exploring spatial dimensions of preferences

Abstract Forests contribute to human well‐being by offering various ecosystem services (ES), including wild food and other products. While previous studies have typically focused on formally marketed wild foods, there is a growing need to understand the broader significance of wild foods as cultural ES and the factors influencing societal preferences for their supply and maintenance. We conducted a study in Italy, a country with a rich cultural heritage associated with wild food, using data from a discrete choice experiment to analyse how people value wild food (specifically, mushrooms, wild berries and wild herbs) and map their preferences. Our findings revealed respondents' willingness to allocate resources to forest programmes that increase and conserve wild foods, indicating their high‐perceived value as ES. We found that regional traditions are a key motivation for collecting wild food, and that respondents typically collect within their regions. The results highlight the importance of integrating regional spatial dynamics to comprehensively understand societal preferences for ES, particularly in the context of local food systems. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.