A growing body of literature suggests a need to incorporate both complementary and competitive relationships among multiple objectives into conservation investment decisions. To do this, we hypothesize that spatial budget allocations and overall benefits for payment for ecosystem services (PES) are influenced by the complexity of complementary and competitive relationships among multiple objectives of PES, i.e., maximizing forest-dependent biodiversity (or “biodiversity”), forest-based carbon storage (or “carbon”), and economic impact triggered by PES. To verify the hypothesis, we apply the multi-objective optimization framework to 231 counties in eight states of the Central and Southern Appalachian Region of the United States. We find 1) narrower spatial budget allocations with inclusion of the objective of maximizing economic impact, which has competitive relationships with the existing complementary biodiversity and carbon objectives, and 2) the foregone overall benefits from the existing complementary objectives increase with further increases in the competitive economic-impact objective. These findings imply that conservation agencies involved in PES planning should be cautious about the negative consequences on distributional equity found in 1) above, and the increasing sacrifice in the existing complementary objectives found in 2) above, when considering introduction of a new economic objective that has a competitive relationship with the existing ecological objectives.

越来越多的文献表明需要将多个目标之间的互补和竞争关系纳入保护投资决策。为此，我们假设生态系统服务 (PES) 的空间预算分配和总体收益受 PES 多个目标之间互补和竞争关系的复杂性影响，即最大化依赖森林的生物多样性（或“生物多样性”） 、基于森林的碳储存（或“碳”）以及 PES 引发的经济影响。为了验证假设，我们将多目标优化框架应用于美国中南部阿巴拉契亚地区八个州的 231 个县。我们发现 1) 更窄的空间预算分配，包括最大化经济影响的目标，与现有的互补生物多样性和碳目标存在竞争关系，以及 2) 随着竞争性经济影响目标的进一步增加，现有互补目标所放弃的总体收益也会增加。这些发现意味着，在考虑引入新的经济目标时，参与 PES 规划的保护机构应谨慎对待上述 1) 中发现的分配公平的负面影响，以及上述 2) 中发现的现有补充目标的日益牺牲与现有的生态目标存在竞争关系。2) 随着竞争性经济影响目标的进一步提高，现有互补目标所放弃的总体收益也会增加。这些发现意味着，在考虑引入新的经济目标时，参与 PES 规划的保护机构应谨慎对待上述 1) 中发现的分配公平的负面影响，以及上述 2) 中发现的现有补充目标的日益牺牲与现有的生态目标存在竞争关系。2) 随着竞争性经济影响目标的进一步提高，现有互补目标所放弃的总体收益也会增加。这些发现意味着，在考虑引入新的经济目标时，参与 PES 规划的保护机构应谨慎对待上述 1) 中发现的分配公平的负面影响，以及上述 2) 中发现的现有补充目标的日益牺牲与现有的生态目标存在竞争关系。