Just as individuals have preferences regarding the various goods and services they purchase every day, they also hold preferences regarding public goods such as those provided by the natural environment. However, unlike private goods, environmental goods often cannot be valued by direct reference to any market price, which makes economic analysis of the costs and benefits of environmental change problematic. A number of methods have been developed to address this problem by attempting to value environmental preferences. Principal among these has been the contingent valuation (CV) method, which uses surveys to ask individuals how much they would be willing to pay or willing to accept in compensation for gains or losses of environmental goods. The period from the mid‐1980s has seen a massive expansion in use of the CV method, and from its original roots in the USA, through Europe and the developed world, the method has now reached worldwide application with a substantial proportion of current studies being undertaken in developing countries where environmental services are often the dominating determinant of everyday living standards. The method has simultaneously moved from the realm of pure academic speculation into the sphere of institutional decision analysis. However, the 1990s have witnessed a developing critique of the CV method, with a number of commentators questioning the underlying validity of its derived valuations. This volume reflects this time of heated debate over the CV method. It contains specially written papers from both sides of that debate, as well as from commentators who see it as an interesting experimental tool regardless of the question of absolute validity of the estimates made. The book is arranged in four main parts, covering theoretical (Part I) and methodological (Part II) aspects of the debate, presenting case studies from the USA, Europe (UK), and a developing country (Philippines) (Part III), and looking at the institutional frameworks within which CV studies are applied (Part IV).