Models Explaining the Levels of Forest Environmental Taxes and Other PES Schemes in Japan

Takuya Takahashi,Katsuya Tanaka

doi:10.3390/f12060685

Abstract

Between 2003 and April 2016, 37 of 47 prefectures (i.e., sub-national local governmental units) introduced forest environmental taxes—local payment for environmental services (PES) schemes. These introductions are unique historical natural experiments, in which local governments made their own political decisions considering multiple factors. This study empirically evaluates models that explain normalized expenditures from forest environmental taxes as well as other PES schemes (subsidies for enhancing forests’ and mountain villages’ multifunction, and green donation) and traditional forestry budgets for Japan’s 47 prefectures based on the median voter model. Results demonstrate that the median voter model can particularly explain forest environmental taxes and forestry budgets. Specifically, the past incidence of droughts and landslides is positively correlated with the levels of forest environmental taxes. The higher the number of municipalities in a prefecture, the lower the amount of forest environmental tax spent on forests. Moreover, the number of forest volunteering groups, possibly an indicator of social capital in the forest sectors, had strong positive correlations with the levels of forest environmental taxes and forestry budgets. Other PES schemes and forestry budgets had unique patterns of correlations with the examined factors.

Highlights

Payment for environmental services (PES) is considered a solution for ecological degradation of the environment [1,2]
We estimated median voter models considering the amount of forest environmental tax revenue per 1 ha of non-national forests in a prefecture (ENVTAX_HA; (1)), forestry expenditures (FORESTRY_HA; (2)), multifunctionality payment scheme (MULTIFUNCTION_HA; (3)), and green donation (GREEN_HA; (4)) as dependent variables using
The results indicate that the coefficients for medium income levels of prefectures (MEDIAN_INCOME) are statistically significant for the environmental tax model and forestry expenditure models with expected positive signs

Summary

Introduction

Payment for environmental services (PES) is considered a solution for ecological degradation of the environment [1,2]. Japan underwent massive afforestation after the Second World War (WWII), thereby increasing the ratio of plantation area from around 20% of the total forest area in the. Some parts of afforested areas were originally deforested during and after WWII, and the other parts were hardwood- and fuel-wood-producing forests. These forests gradually lost their commercial value owing to the transition of energy sources of the country from wood to fossil fuels during the 1950s and 1960s [5]. After the 1980s, a large part of these plantation forests, at about 10 million hectares in total, reached a stage wherein they required thinning so that they could grow well [6].

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