We reviewed 11 case studies that assessed the impacts of changes in ecosystem service (ES) provisions mainly caused by deforestation on local residents in developing countries. We focused particularly on the categorization of the socioeconomic and environmental characteristics of the residents subject to the effects of actual changes in ES provisions caused by deforestation, applying three perspectives: their issues (i.e., type of ES), time and spatial scale settings. We revealed that the studies typically use medium- to long-term periods in assessing the impacts. We argue that a lack of short-term assessment studies may result in a lack of deep knowledge of the social groups most vulnerable to being affected by deforestation in the short term, leading to governments’development policies and measures being less effective. We draw implications for appropriate methods of information collection and identification of social groups vulnerable to the changes associated with deforestation.