Forests provide a variety of ecosystem goods and services to society. One of these services, avalanche protection, has the typical characteristics of a public good: non-excludability and non-rivalry. A monetary valuation of this service would be helpful to provide efficient and effective protection to the local population. We present the results of a case study from the Swiss Alps, where we determined the willingness to pay for avalanche protection based on a choice experiment combined with a risk-based evaluation and computer-based visualization techniques. Furthermore, we compare these results with the costs of alternative technical measures for natural hazard mitigation. We conclude that the willingness to pay for avalanche protection is higher than the costs of temporary measures, such as wooden stems and grilles, but lower than more costly long-term solutions like steel bridges or nets. Silvicultural measures to maintain the protection forest are by far the most cost-efficient way to prevent people from avalanches, provided that the forest's vulnerability to heavy storm events can be reduced.