This paper presents a choice experiment analyzing the consumers' preferences towards a policy for replacing conventional electricity with electricity generated from forest biomass. The results show that consumers specially prefer the effects related to the lower risk of forest fires and to the decrease in pressure on non-renewable resources. The article also presents a methodological test in relation to the payment timeframe and its effect on marginal willingness to pay and consistency of responses using choice experiments. The most frequent and realistic payments are associated with lower presence of inconsistent responses. Finally, we cannot reject the null hypothesis of no effects of payment timeframe on marginal willingness to pay. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.