Forest Value Dictionary

by David N. Bengston & Zhi Xu

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Dictionary information

Description

The Forest Value Dictionary is composed of 612 words and phrases. It is a classification system that identifies four broad categories of forest values: economic/utilitarian, life support, aesthetic, and moral/spiritual values. . It was originally developed and used to empirically analyze the evolution of forest values in the United States from 1982 through 1993 (Bengston & Xu, 1995)

The table below provides for each of the four categories, sample words and phrases and well as the number of entries.

For an excellent presentation on how to build and validate a domain specific categorization system, we strongly reccommend the reading of Bergston & Xu (1995, see below).

For more information

If you need further information on the Forest Value Dictionary, please contact David N. Gengston at dbengston@fs.fed.us or visit his web site.

Technical questions related to the use of the WordStat version should be sent to us at info@provalisresearch.com

WordStat Specific Instruction

In order to apply this dictionary, you will need to enable the "Accept Numeric Characters" option since some entries contain numbers (like CO2). The hyphen should also be included in the list of valid characters.

Selected References

Bengston, D, & Xu, Z. (1995). Changing national forest values: A content analysis St. Paul, Minn.: North Central Forest Experiment Station, Forest Service, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.

Xu, Z. and D. Bengston (1997) Trends in national forest values among forestry professionals, environmentalists, and the news media, 1982-1993. Society and Natural Resources 10: 43-59.

Categories and Sample Words

CATEGORY	EXAMPLES	# ENTRIES
ECONOMIC/UTILITARIAN VALUE EXPRESSIONS		110
commodities, exports, industrial forestry, logging, lumber product, profitable, supply, timber shortage, tree plantation, willing to pay
LIFE SUPPORT VALUE EXPRESSIONS		278
absorption of pollutants, acid rain, air quality, biodiversity, carbon storage, climate change, damaging steam, ecosystem, erosion, extinct species, habitat, ozone layer
AESTHETIC VALUE EXPRESSIONS		139
awesome, elegant, evocative, exquisite, glorious, luxuriant, natural setting, ornament, panoramic, scenic beauty, sensual, splendor, sumptuous, superb
MORAL/SPIRITUAL VALUE EXPRESSIONS		85
ancient tree, consecration, eden, environmental ethics, heritage, immortal, irreplaceable, legacy, morality, posterity, profaning, sacred, transcendental