Simple Incentives and Group Dependence for Successful Payments for Ecosystem Services Programs: Evidence from an Experimental Game in Rural Lao PDR

Carl Salk,Grace Wong,Maria‐Claudia Lopez

doi:10.1111/conl.12277

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, we use a new game‐based tool to evaluate the immediate and longer term behavioral change potential of three different payments for ecosystem services (PES) delivery mechanisms: direct payments for individual performance, direct payments for group performance, and insurance. Results from four rural shifting‐cultivation dependent communities in Lao PDR suggest that easily understood group‐oriented incentives yield the greatest immediate resource‐use reduction and experience less free‐riding. Group‐based incentives may succeed because they motivate participants to communicate about strategies and coordinate their actions and are perceived as fair. No incentive had a lasting effect after it ceased, but neither did any crowd out the participants’ baseline behavior. Temporary reductions in resource dependence may provide a buffer for development of new livelihoods and longer term change. Games like the one developed here can help policy makers appropriately target environmental incentive programs to local contexts and teach program participants how incentive schemes work.

Highlights

When forest-derived greenhouse gas emissions are avoided, the benefits are worldwide, but the burden of reduced forest resource availability is local
Individual socioeconomic traits had little relation to within-game decisions. We addressed these questions with a forest-framed game in which groups of eight participants individually and simultaneously decided how many patches to cultivate in a stylized forest with space for 100 agricultural plots
The incentive effect differed significantly among mechanisms (Kruskal–Wallis test, χ 2 = 15.181, df = 2, P = 0.0005), with group-based payments (GP) and individually-directed payments (IP) showing a bigger decrease in forest use than INS

Summary

Introduction

When forest-derived greenhouse gas emissions are avoided, the benefits are worldwide, but the burden of reduced forest resource availability is local. Protected areas are an important defense against deforestation, but additional lands are required to meet international conservation goals (Mora & Sale 2011). There is ample evidence that communities can self-organize to manage natural resources like forests (Ostrom 1990; Hayes & Ostrom 2005). When conservation benefits accrue outside of a community (like global climate regulation from carbon sequestration or water sparing for downstream consumers), and burdens fall on local resource users, compensation for their incurred costs is important. Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are an attractive policy option that promote resource use reductions. PES is a central mechanism in “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” (REDD+)

Methods

Results

Conclusion