Abstract
Values play an important role in farmers’ land management decisions, becoming increasingly relevant when designing environmental policy. One key element that influences farming decisions is the land tenure under which farmers and their land are embedded, which represents different sets of rights for farmers. Therefore, the aim of this study was to elicit farmers’ values regarding the social and ecological attributes of the landscape, and determine how these values vary according to differences in land rights. We performed this exercise in the two most important land tenure systems in rural Mexico. We carried out a choice experiment to understand preferences for different landscape attributes such as vegetation cover, surface water, terrain slope, and type of property. Then, we probed how these preferences change according to the land rights that farmers hold. We found that surface water was consistently the most important landscape attribute. However, there were clear differences that were related to land rights for some values, such as for example, vegetation cover. Institutional mechanisms such as boundary rules and conflicting values are part of the explanation of these differences. These results provide a bridge to understanding farmers’ management decisions, and in the future, improving sustainable development.
Highlights
There is an increasing consensus that values should be considered when designing environmental policy and management strategies [1,2,3,4]
Both communities had similar samples according to the ages and genders of the interviewees, the most frequent age interval in Cuzalapa agrarian communities (ACs) was from 41 to 50 years, and in Pabelo ejido, it was from people older than 60 years
Deforestation in the ejido is a disutility, while in the AC, it represents a utility and received a positive valuation. We suggest that these differences may be partially due to land rights restrictions in the AC imposed by the biosphere reserve, which have led to a situation where already deforested plots become highly valuable and are intensely used by farmers [57]
Summary
There is an increasing consensus that values should be considered when designing environmental policy and management strategies [1,2,3,4] When it comes to farming, values play an important role in farmers’ decisions regarding landscape management [5,6,7]. Across the landscape ensemble, it is difficult to understand the values of critical natural resources (e.g., forests, rivers, fauna, etc.), and people value nature in multiple and sometimes conflicting ways [2,8,9] This is important, because often, there is public interest in the outcomes of management strategies with respect to nature and their resources [10]. Understanding farmers’ preferences for different elements of the natural world can help prioritize conservation actions [12] and enhance agricultural development and sustainability [13]
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