Is international free-riding immanent to transboundary spatial conservation?

Sviataslau Valasiuk

No 2023-09, Working Papers from Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw

Abstract: Despite their recent global expansion in nominal terms, many transboundary nature protected areas tend to avoid hands-on cross-border co-operation. One common explanation which is widely seen a major obstacle towards the concerted transboundary conservation is international free riding on the centralised decision-making level. I examine empirically whether international free-riding is embedded in citizens’ stated preferences for extended protection in the case of two transboundary nature protected areas Białowieża Forest and Fulufjället. I scrutinise a sub-set of merged survey samples from the four countries involved, including only the citizens assumingly incentivised to free-ride on unilateral foreign country’s conservation action. I apply attitudinal indicators to form effect-coded variables that measure free-riding, and control for use value, nationality, individual socioeconomic characteristics, and incentive compatibility of the survey design. The results indicate no widespread tendency of international free-riding; the conclusion is maintained with varying modelling approaches or sampling strategy employed.

Keywords: transboundary nature protected areas; stated preferences; public good; free-riding; binary logit; negative binomial regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H41 Q23 Q28 Q51 Q57 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:war:wpaper:2023-09

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