Researchers Aim to Solve Conservation Program Participation Puzzle

How can conservation programs engage natural resource owners and managers to protect theA view of one of the locations in Bolivia where Bauchet and Ma are researching PES programs environment? Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), an approach relying on conditional incentives (cash or in-kind) to encourage people to manage natural resources sustainably, have become the dominant strategy to promote environmental conservation worldwide. However, these efforts have been met with mixed results when it comes to participation, especially by vulnerable groups.

Drs. Jonathan Bauchet and Zhao Ma are studying the puzzle of participation in such programs, following their previous work in Bolivia that unexpectedly showed that removing conditionality in incentive-based programs did not affect either the average participate rate or the characteristics of the participants in conditional and unconditional versions of the program.

Under a new National Science Foundation grant, “Solving the Participation Puzzle: Understanding Mechanisms Behind Causal Effects of Randomized Controlled Trials in Conservation,” (Award #2242087) researchers look to better understand drivers of participation and mechanisms by which incentive-based conservation programs generate impacts. They will leverage theories from cultural anthropology, social psychology and economics and compare them to local households’ perceptions of the PES program and its impacts (or lack thereof).

“This research advances theoretical understanding of how cultural norms about trust, intrinsic motivation andA focus group in Bolivia perceptions of fairness interact with material rewards to predict households’ environmental conservation decisions,” said Bauchet, associate professor in the Division of Consumer Science in the White Lodging – J.W. Marriott, Jr., School of Hospitality and Tourism Management and in the Department of Agricultural Economics. “It contributes to a growing body of literature on decolonizing environmental conservation by investigating reasons for participation in conservation programs beyond financial reasons.”

Source: purdue.edu

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