believe that forests are for environmental benefits (rather than
economic). The country dummy variables (with Uganda as the
baseline category) indicate that 10% of the households are from
Bolivia, 23.5% are from Kenya, and about 16.5% are from Mexico,
and the remaining 49% of households are from Uganda.
A variable indicating Socioeconomic Status is an index
calculated by the asset holdings of the household and will take
some time to describe. Prior research has used socioeconomic
indicators of wealth such as the type of materials from which a
home is built, ownership of various goods such as televisions and
radios, education level, and occupation (Vyas and Kumaranayake,
2006). Researchers have sought to develop indexes that combine
multiple indicators of wealth. Principal components analysis (PCA)
is often used in this regard; it is a data reduction technique to
detect components which explain the underlying variation in the
multiple indicators. Weuse PCA to compose an index from twentyone
indicators of wealth for households sampled in a total of 23
communities in the four countries.