Buying certification: pigs in pokes, warm glows, and unexploded
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Creating markets is becoming a popular way of treating forest products that were once
routinely regarded as externalities. Following this philosophy, a certification premium might
be regarded as a valuation of the environmental (and possibly social) benefits of growing
timber sustainably and in an environmentally friendly manner. However, the free-rider
problem, the multiplicity of interpretations of sustainability, and profound ignorance of the
relationship between certified products bought and environmental benefits achieved, all make
it unlikely that the premium (if it exists) reflects anything other than a degree of moral
satisfaction achieved by purchasing certified timber. Whether even this is to be regarded as
an addition to welfare is debatable. However, a certification premium might be paid as a way
of “acting rightly”. This justifies a proper and direct evaluation of the externalities, and of the
costs required to avoid them.