The Efficiency of Voluntary Incentive Policies for Preventing Biodiversity Loss

David Lewis, Andrew J. Plantinga, Erik Nelson and Stephen Polasky

No 92220, Staff Papers from University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics

Abstract: In this paper we analyze the efficiency of voluntary incentive-based land-use policies for biodiversity conservation. Two factors combine to make it difficult to achieve an efficient result. First, the spatial pattern of habitat across multiple landowners is important for determining biodiversity conservation results. Second, the willingness of private landowners to accept a payment in exchange for enrolling in a conservation program is private information. Therefore, a conservation agency cannot easily control the spatial pattern of voluntary enrollment in conservation programs. We begin by showing how the distribution of a landowner’s willingness to accept a conservation payment can be derived from a parcel-scale land-use change model. Next we combine the econometric land-use model with spatial data and ecological models to simulate the effects of various conservation program designs on biodiversity conservation outcomes. We compare these results to an estimate of the efficiency frontier that maximizes biodiversity conservation at each level of cost. The frontier mimics the regulator’s solution to the biodiversity conservation problem when she has perfect information on landowner willingness-to-accept. Results indicate that there are substantial differences in biodiversity conservation scores generated by the incentive-based policies and efficient solutions. The performance of incentive-based policies is particularly poor at low levels of the conservation budget where spatial fragmentation of conserved parcels is a large concern. Performance can be improved by encouraging agglomeration of conserved habitat and by incorporating basic biological information, such as that on rare habitats, into the selection criteria.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Land Economics/Use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44
Date: 2009-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/92220/files/stpap533.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The efficiency of voluntary incentive policies for preventing biodiversity loss (2011)
Working Paper: The Efficiency of Voluntary Incentive Policies for Preventing Biodiversity Loss (2009)
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:ags:wisagr:92220

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.92220

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff Papers from University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().