Abstract
Over the past two decades, the assessment of ecosystem services (ES) has become an important conceptual and modeling tool used to quantify the contribution of individual ecosystems (including global ones) and biodiversity to human well-being. Although there are a number of conceptual frameworks and a wide range of empirical applications, more detailed theoretical definitions based on ecological and economic theories are lacking, and ambiguity also persists in the definition of the term ecosystem service.
The ad hoc definition and general formulation of this term is then limiting when interpreting the achieved results, the possibility of comparison across studies, including the value and function transfer, or when designing economic instruments such as payments for ecosystem services. In this contribution, we therefore discuss terms such as final product, intermediate product, ecological production function and utility function, i.e. terms that are decisive for the correct definition of ES from the point of view of economic theory.