| Field | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Field Trial Status | Before on_going | After completed |
| Field Last Published | Before January 16, 2020 08:24 AM | After November 03, 2023 05:28 AM |
| Field Keyword(s) | Before Environment And Energy | After Environment And Energy |
| Field Building on Existing Work | Before | After Yes |
| Field | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Field Paper Abstract | Before | After Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are increasingly being implemented worldwide as conservation instruments that provide conditional economic incentives to landowners for a prespecified duration. However, in the psychological and economic literature, critics have raised concerns that PES can undermine the recipient’s intrinsic motivation to engage in pro-environmental behavior. Such “crowding out” may reduce the effectiveness of PES and may even worsen conservation outcomes once programs are terminated. In this study, we harnessed a randomized controlled trial that provided PES to land users in Western Uganda and evaluated whether these incentives had a persistent effect on pro-environmental behavior and its underlying behavioral drivers 6 y after the last payments were made. We elicited pro-environmental behavior with an incentivized, experimental measure that consisted of a choice for respondents between more and less environmentally friendly tree seedlings. In addition to this main outcome, survey-based measures for underlying behavioral drivers captured self-efficacy beliefs, intrinsic motivation, and perceived forest benefits. Overall, we found no indications that PES led to the crowding out of pro-environmental behavior. That is, respondents from the treatment villages were as likely as respondents from the control villages to choose environmentally friendly tree seedlings. We also found no systematic differences between these two groups in their underlying behavioral drivers, and nor did we find evidence for crowding effects when focusing on self-reported tree planting behavior as an alternative outcome measure. |
| Field Paper Citation | Before | After Vorlaufer, Tobias, Stefanie Engel, Joost de Laat, and Björn Vollan. 2023. ‘Payments for Ecosystem Services Did Not Crowd out Pro-Environmental Behavior: Long-Term Experimental Evidence from Uganda’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120 (18): e2215465120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2215465120. |
| Field Paper URL | Before | After https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2215465120 |
| Field | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Field Paper Abstract | Before | After Conservation policies and programs may trigger unintended, potentially irreversible, changes that were initially not anticipated. Concerns have been raised that the introduction of payments for environmental services (PES) fosters the privatization of natural ecosystems to the detriment of marginalized groups. We assess the long-term impacts of PES on sharing of access to natural resources, associated norms, and social preferences. The studied PES program was implemented as a randomized control trial in western Uganda. Using survey and experimental data collected six years after the last payments were made, we find that the PES program did not lead to a lasting shift in resource sharing practices but did induce stronger social norms for resource sharing. Moreover, landowners in former PES villages exhibit more egalitarian social preferences than landowners in control villages. These results highlight that despite introducing unequal conservation benefits to communities, long-lasting negative spillovers of PES could be avoided. |
| Field Paper Citation | Before | After Vorlaufer, Tobias, Joost de Laat, and Stefanie Engel. 2023. ‘Do Payments for Environmental Services Affect Forest Access and Social Preferences in the Long Run? Experimental Evidence from Uganda’. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 10 (2): 389–412. https://doi.org/10.1086/721440. |
| Field Paper URL | Before | After https://doi.org/10.1086/721440 |