User Responses to Payments for Environmental Services

Transcription

1 User Responses to Payments for Environmental Services The Role of Trust Krister Andersson, Nathan Cook, Tara Grillos, Maria-Claudia Lopez, and Glenn Wright Paris, France November 28, 2015

2 Today s Question Under which social conditions will PES programs increase forest protection?

3 Payments for Environmental Services A conditional payment to resource users to provide ES (Wunder 2007) A new fad in environmental policy The main component of the REDD+ initiative Concerns: Motivational Crowding: Payments may crowd out intrinsic motivation (Frey 1997, Vatn, 2002; Midler et al 2015) What happens to behavior after payments stop?

4 PES and Trust Trust helps solve collective-action problems, reduces transaction costs (eg Ostrom, 1997) Trust and social context influence how users respond to PES (Vollan 2008;d Adda, 2011) Two distinct conceptualizations of the role of trust in response to interventions: 1. Trust is a proxy for prosocial norms and intrinsic motivation to cooperate (Vollan 2008; d Adda, 2011; Midler et al. 2015) 2. Trust is a belief about the expected behavior of others (Gächter et al., 2004) Each definition carries very different implications for how trust affects users response to PES

5 Theoretical Proposition It is important to distinguish between intrinsic motivation and trust: Trust can facilitate the evolution of prosocial norms but it should not be conflated with an intrinsic value.

6 Hypothesis PES programs produce more forest conservation in the long run when forest users enjoy high levels of trust

7 Data and Methods

8 The Appropriation Game Appropriation Game (Inspired by Travers et al. (2011) Cox et al (2013), Blanco et al. (2013 and 2014) Groups of n subjects have to decide whether to cut trees from a common forest or leaving the trees in the common forest. The common forest has a size t trees Individual Decision: to decide how many trees to extract from the common forest Individual s harvest (z) has a value of h tokens per tree for the subject. Each tree remaining in the common forest has a value of ( g/n) for each subject in the group. Individual Decision: to decide how many trees to extract from the common forest Social dilemma: g>h and g/n<h Nash e trees extracted; Social optimum 0 trees extracted

9 Pay-off

10 The treatment: Payment for Environmental Services An organization offers to pay E tokens to the group, E/n tokens for each participant, as long as the group does not cut trees from the forest. However, the external organization cannot monitor perfectly whether the group is cutting trees or not. The organization is more likely to detect cutting if more trees are cut. Each tree that is cut increases the probability of detection. If the group has cut trees and the organization finds out, the organization will not pay the bonus in that round. Also, if the group cuts more than a certain threshold (50%), the enforcement becomes perfect and then the external organization does not pay.

11 The Payment for Environmental Services

12 Game setting Game parameters Groups of 8 subjects Common Forest: 80 trees; g: 8 tokens Individual extraction 5 tokens Individual Decision: cut up to 10 trees Static resource (full restocking each round) PES, E=160 tokens, 20 for each subject. Participants are paid in cash after the game Avg earnings = day of local wage rate

13 Experimental design Rounds 1-8 (Stage 1) Rounds 8-16 (Stage 2) Rounds (Stage 3) Baseline PES with equal sharing Baseline

14 Observations, unit of analysis Each version of the game (treatment) was played in 51 communities Five countries 1168 individuals, in 146 groups 18,120 individual decisions

15 Descriptives Statistic N Mean St. Dev. Min Max Years of education 1, Age 1, Female 1, Trust 1, Uganda 1, Peru 1, Tanzania 1, Indonesia 1, Bolivia 1,

16 Measure of trust Degree of agreement (1-6) with the following statement: Most people can be trusted / most people in this village can be trusted.

17 Results

18 PES reduces forest harvesting significantly while payment is offered An average treatment effect of five less trees harvested per individual per round Short-term PES effect is stronger among low trust individuals

19 High levels of trust enhances long-term effect of PES PES programs produce more forest conservation in the long run when participants enjoy high levels of trust Crowding in of environmental behavior

20 Individual- and Group-level Analyses Group Individual

21 Conclusions 1.We see no evidence in support of PES crowding out of environmental behavior in general 2. PES achieves significant reductions in forest depletion while payments are flowing, especially among low trusters 3. Once payments stop, the duration and intensity of the pro-conservation effect depend on the levels of interpersonal trust: PES have lasting pro-conservation effects, IFF individuals enjoy high levels of interpersonal trust 4. PES seems like a relatively benign policy instrument, at least for individuals who are economically dependent on the resource

22 Acknowledgements National Science Foundation (DEB ) Center for International Forestry Research (forest governance program)

23 Thank you

24 Bonus slides

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