Participatory policies and intrinsic motivation to conserve forest commons

Charles Palmer, Grace Iara Souza, Edilza Laray, Virgilio Viana and Anthony Hall
Additional contact information
Grace Iara Souza: London School of Economics
Edilza Laray: Escola Superior de Artes e Turismo, Universidade do Estado do Amazonas
Virgilio Viana: Fundação Amazonas Sustentável
Anthony Hall: London School of Economics

Nature Sustainability, 2020, vol. 3, issue 8, 620-627

Abstract: Abstract Participatory policies for natural resource management and poverty reduction have been implemented worldwide. Inclusive participation and empowerment potentially enhances intrinsic motivation to conserve resources. However, whether participation in activities for poverty reduction enhances intrinsic motivation for resource conservation is unknown. We evaluate the impact of participation, in activities to develop sustainable livelihoods, on the intrinsic motivation of forest-dwelling community members to conserve forest commons. As a component of Brazil’s Bolsa Floresta programme, these activities involve decision making, skills training and knowledge exchange related to sustainable livelihoods. Using a framed common-pool resource game with 160 community members in Amazonas State, we measure intrinsic motivation via members’ extent of cooperation in conservation of trees. We obtain an estimate of impact by exploiting a natural experiment, whereby the treatment group was offered the choice to participate in activities to develop sustainable livelihoods. We find that participation crowds in cooperative behaviour and, hence, intrinsic motivation to conserve forest commons. This result suggests that enabling participation and empowering community members in the development of sustainable livelihoods has a positive effect on conservation behaviour. Our results have critical implications for participatory policies with dual environment–development goals in settings where policy recipients are marginalized.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0531-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natsus:v:3:y:2020:i:8:d:10.1038_s41893-020-0531-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/natsustain/

DOI: 10.1038/s41893-020-0531-8

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Sustainability is currently edited by Monica Contestabile

More articles in Nature Sustainability from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().