Institutions and conservation: The case of protected areas

Abstract

We study the link between institutions and the establishment of protected areas for natural resources conservation. Using difference-in-differences we estimate the impacts of democratization on the share of countries’ area under protected areas in a panel of 144 countries over 1992–2018. We find that countries that democratized devote higher shares of their land to protected areas, but only in the medium- and long-run. Our preferred estimates indicate that, fifteen years after democratization, the share of countries’ area under PAs increases on average by one percentage point more than what would have been implemented without democratization. We also find evidence that democratization leads countries to implement the different types of protected areas in a non-homogeneous way. Our results are robust to several estimators and treatment definitions, confirming the critical role of institutions for natural resources conservation.