Ecosystem services have predominately been valued from the perspective of individual preference, where the willingness to pay of an individual is measured either directly or indirectly. However, when one observes where money is spent on increasing ecosystem services, preserving them, compensating for their loss, or replacing lost services it is almost always through collective action of governments, corporations, or non-governmental organizations. This work suggests that revealed social preference is the most appropriate economic perspective for institutions to use in analyzing the value of ecosystem services, particularly when the scale of inference is large, the decisions to be made are multiple, or the final use of the ecosystem service is uncertain. The eco-price collates instances where society has paid for an increase in ecosystem services, to avoid their loss or restore damages, in the form of $ paid per biophysical unit of ecosystem service. Eco-prices are categorized by type of biophysical work done (i.e. water, carbon, nutrients, soil, and biodiversity). Applying the categorical eco-prices to biophysical ecosystem services flows for average forest and freshwater wetland conditions in Maryland yields an estimate of the annual ecosystem service benefit of $5,767 per hectare of forest and $9,693 per hectare of freshwater wetlands.

从个人偏爱的角度来看，生态系统服务的价值占主导地位，其中直接或间接地衡量个人的支付意愿。但是，当人们观察到将钱花在增加生态系统服务，保护它们，补偿其损失或更换失去的服务上时，几乎总是通过政府，公司或非政府组织的集体行动来进行的。这项工作表明，揭示的社会偏好是机构用于分析生态系统服务价值的最合适的经济视角，特别是当推理规模大，要做出的决定是多重的或生态系统服务的最终用途时不确定。生态价格整理了社会为增加生态系统服务付费的实例，为避免其损失或恢复损害，采取以生态系统服务的每个生物物理单位支付美元的形式。生态价格按完成的生物物理工作的类型（即水，碳，养分，土壤和生物多样性）分类。将分类的生态价格应用于马里兰州平均森林和淡水湿地条件的生物物理生态系统服务流量，估计每年的生态系统服务收益为每公顷森林5767美元和每公顷淡水湿地9693美元。