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Abstract:
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"Equity is increasingly being recognized as a crucial issue for environmental conservation, not just from an ethical, but also from an efficiency perspective. Ignoring the sociopolitical context while implementing policies could undermine their environmental effectiveness as perceived unfairness may erode cooperation and compliance by policy addressees. For example, the sanctions commonly implemented in Protected Areas raise equity concerns as local people depend on these areas to pursue livelihoods. Relocation and loss of control over land and resources has been reported to result in resentment, poaching and antagonism (Mbaiwa, 2005). On the contrary, positive incentives such as Payments for Ecosystem Services – PES, are often seen as a way to improve livelihoods. Exclusion from PES has been reported to result in rule breaking, protest and sabotage (To et al., 2012). Nevertheless, when neighboring households of a protected area generate relevant levels of pressure on its border, practitioners could use PES as a complementary tool for buffer areas. Where state enforcement capacity is low, PES have also been discussed as complements to legal restrictions inside protected areas (Engel, 2016). However, the implications of implementing different policies in neighboring areas have not been formally studied yet. We use field experiments in rural Colombia to examine spillover effects from implementing different policies or policy mixes in neighboring areas. The framed field experiment was implemented with farmers from a region in Colombia that is highly relevant for the provision of water in the country. The experimental game design mimicked farmers’ decision situation on their farm. All participants first played a baseline scenario of the game without policy. Then they participated in a second game, for which they were divided into two groups (inside and outside an environmental priority area). Each group was assigned to a different policy. In a first treatment we mimicked PES targeting, with one group remaining under the baseline condition (no policy) while the other is offered a reward policy. In a second treatment, we resembled the case where a protected area is surrounded by a buffer area targeted by a PES. The group of farmers living inside the priority area therefore faces (weak) sanctions while the one living outside of the priority area is offered a reward. Finally, in a third treatment we studied the impact of using a PES as a compensation mechanism within a protected area. Farmers living inside the priority area therefore face sanctions but also receive a reward, while the others are only offered a reward. Control treatments with equal policies were implemented to allow testing for spillover effects. We assessed the impact of the different policy combinations on fairness perceptions and pro-environmental behavior. As expected, preliminary results suggest that exclusion from PES in absence of further policy reduces pro-environmental behavior. Surprisingly, penalizing some while compensating others increases pro-environmental behavior of those penalized. Differences in the effect of fairness concerns are the main potential explanation for this behavior."
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