Do Payments for Environmental Services Affect Forest Access and Social Preferences in the Long Run? Experimental Evidence from Uganda
Vorlaufer, Tobias; de Laat, Joost; Engel, Stefanie
(2023) Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, volume 10, issue 2, pp. 389 - 412
(Article)
Abstract
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 pri-vatization of natural ecosystems to the detriment of marginalized groups. We assess the long-term impacts of PES on sharing of
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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 de-spite introducing unequal conservation benefits to communities, long-lasting negative spillovers of PES could be avoided.
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Keywords: forest resources, impact evaluation, payment for ecosystem services, PES, RCT, sharing, social impact, social norms, Taverne, Economics and Econometrics, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
ISSN: 2333-5955
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago Press
Note: Funding Information: for this research was provided by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in the framework of the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship endowed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We thank all participants and communities for their support and hospitality. Special thanks to go to Mathew Kato Ahimbisibwe, Gloria Ayesiga, Lotte van der Haar, Angélica López Ardila, and Christine Nabulumba for their support during and after the data collection. We are grateful for feedback from Bosco Lliso and from two anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of the manuscript. Funding Information: (stefanie.engel@uos.de). Funding for this research was provided by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in the framework of the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship endowed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We thank all participants and communities for their support and hospitality. Special thanks to go to Mathew Kato Ahimbisibwe, Gloria Ayesiga, Lotte van der Haar, Angélica López Ardila, and Christine Nabulumba for their support during and after the data collection. We are grateful for feedback from Bosco Lliso and from two anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. All rights reserved.
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