Damage schedules are constructed based on scales of relative importance obtained from people’s judgements about
values of various resource losses and activities causing losses. It is a non-monetary valuation approach as people are
asked to indicate their preferences and values about the resources without any reference to monetary values. The
scales of relative importance are derived from the responses of people to series of paired comparison questions.
People are simply asked to choose one item in each pair that they consider more important. The damage schedules,
developed based on these importance scales, reflect community values which should be considered in the natural
resources management and policymaking.