Sammanfattning

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are widespread in conservation policy. In PES, environmental effectiveness and social equity are often perceived as conflicting goals. Empirical studies on the relationship between popular design features, such as payment differentiation and payment conditionality, and effectiveness and equity are scarce. Further, they struggle with measuring and separating ecological and equity outcomes. In this study, we combine two incentivized lab-in-the-field experiments with 259 land users from eight villages in North-Western Vietnam to assess both individual conservation effort and community-level equity perceptions under four different PES designs. Effort is measured in a real-effort task with real-world environmental benefits; equity perceptions about payment designs in the real-effort task are measured in a coordination game. We demonstrate that payment design affects both effort and equity perceptions. Payments which are differentiated and are solely conditional on individuals' contributions of effort are perceived as most equitable. They are also more effective in motivating conservation effort than other designs, although the differences are small and not significant for all comparisons. By working out the positive correlation of effectiveness and equity across the four payment schemes, we show that these objectives are not necessarily conflicting goals in incentive-based conservation policy. Further, we can show that women exert greater conservation efforts. We discuss how greater equity and effectiveness could be achieved with reforms towards more input-based distribution criteria in Vietnam's PES legislation and the limitations and opportunities of the experimental paradigm for research on PES.

Nyckelord

Social justice; Fairness; Experimental economics; Policy instruments; Lab-in-the-field experiments; Forest conservation; Social norms; Coordination; South East Asia

Publicerad i

Land Use Policy
2019, Volym: 86, sidor: 218-228

SLU författare

• Rommel, Jens

  • Institutionen för ekonomi, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
    

Globala målen

Skydda, återställa och främja ett hållbart nyttjande av landbaserade ekosystem, hållbart bruka skogar, bekämpa ökenspridning, hejda och vrida tillbaka markförstöringen samt hejda förlusten av biologisk mångfald
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UKÄ forskningsämne

Nationalekonomi


Publikationens identifierare

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.05.010

Permanent länk till denna sida (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/100113