The agglomeration bonus in practice—An exploratory assessment of the Swiss network bonus

Abstract

Incentivising farmers in the context of agri-environment schemes to provide spatially-connected conservation measures is a challenging task. The idea of an agglomeration bonus – where farmers are paid a bonus on top of a spatially homogeneous payment if they provide spatially connected conservation areas – has been suggested in the literature as a possible solution. Existing literature on the agglomeration bonus focuses on its theoretical analysis whereas we provide an evaluation of an existing policy that exhibits strong features of the agglomeration bonus idea – the Swiss network bonus scheme. We present an evaluation of three conservation projects that include the network bonus scheme using the criteria of ecological effectiveness, monitoring and enforcement, cost-effectiveness and dynamic incentive effects. Given the limited amount of data available and the fact that ours is the first investigation of this policy, we carried out a qualitative, exploratory study.