Increasing the impact of collective incentives in payments for ecosystem services

David Kaczan, Alexander Pfaff, Luz Rodriguez and Elizabeth Shapiro-Garza

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2017, vol. 86, issue C, 48-67

Abstract: Collective payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs make payments to groups, conditional on specified aggregate land-management outcomes. Such collective contracting may be well suited to settings with communal land tenure or decision-making. Given that collective contracting does not require costly individual-level information on outcomes, it may also facilitate conditioning on additionality (i.e., conditioning payments upon clearly improved outcomes relative to baseline). Yet collective contracting often suffers from free-riding, which undermines group outcomes and may be exacerbated or ameliorated by PES designs. We study impacts of conditioning on additionality within a number of collective PES designs. We use a framed field-laboratory experiment with participants from a new PES program in Mexico. Because social interactions are critical within collective processes, we assess the impacts from conditioning on additionality given: (1) group participation in contract design, and (2) a group coordination mechanism. Conditioning on above-baseline outcomes raised contributions, particularly among initially lower contributors. Group participation in contract design increased impact, as did the coordination mechanism.

Keywords: D70; Q15; C92; Payments for ecosystem services; Collective action; Conditionality; Additionality; Mexico (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:86:y:2017:i:c:p:48-67

DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2017.06.007

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