Carrot or Stick? Modelling How Landowner Behavioural Responses Can Cause Incentive-Based Forest Governance to Backfire

Abstract

Mitigating the negative impacts of declining worldwide forest cover remains a significant socio-ecological challenge, due to the dominant role of human decision-making. Here we use a Markov chain model of land-use dynamics to examine the impact of governance on forest cover in a region. Each land parcel can be either forested or barren (deforested), and landowners decide whether to deforest their parcel according to perceived value (utility). We focus on three governance strategies: yearly incentive for conservation, one-time penalty for deforestation and one-time incentive for reforestation. The incentive and penalty are incorporated into the expected utility of forested land, which decreases the net gain of deforestation. By analyzing the equilibrium and stability of the landscape dynamics, we observe four possible outcomes: a stationary-forested landscape, a stationary-deforested landscape, an unstable landscape fluctuating near the equilibrium, and a cyclic-forested landscape induced by synchronized deforestation. We find that the two incentive-based strategies often result in highly fluctuating forest cover over decadal time scales or longer, and in a few cases, reforestation incentives actually decrease the average forest cover. In contrast, a penalty for deforestation results in the stable persistence of forest cover (generally >30%). The idea that larger conservation incentives will always yield higher and more stable forest cover is not supported in our findings. The decision to deforest is influenced by more than a simple, “rational” cost-benefit analysis: social learning and myopic, stochastic decision-making also have important effects. We conclude that design of incentive programs may need to account for potential counter-productive long-term effects due to behavioural feedbacks.

Go big or go home: A model-based assessment of general strategies to slow the spread of forest pests via infested firewood

“…While the first option is more common, the latter has been implemented seldom over the past decade due to legal and liability constraints [ 24 , 29 – 31 ]. We implement the options for intercepting the movement of firewood to slow the spread of invasive pests in a mechanistic metapopulation model, and use the replicator equation to represent social learning dynamics (see [ 18 , 32 – 34 ]). We also evaluate local quarantine at recreational destinations as an alternative control method.…”

Convergence of socio-ecological dynamics in disparate ecological systems under strong coupling to human social systems

“…Individuals who cooperate with one another may choose to punish defectors in the group who attempt to over-exploit the resource, thus ensuring the resource is sustainably harvested. From a socio-ecological perspective, CPR problems exemplify a 1 INTRODUCTION coupled socio-ecological system (or human-environment system), where the dynamics of a social system influence an ecological systems, and vice versa (Innes et al, 2013;Henderson et al, 2013). Previous research has explored how the tension between social norms that tend to drive population opinion to conformity, and conservation priorities that become stronger as a resource becomes more rare, compete with one another to generate complex dynamics (Sigdel et al, 2017).…”

“…Previous research has explored how the tension between social norms that tend to drive population opinion to conformity, and conservation priorities that become stronger as a resource becomes more rare, compete with one another to generate complex dynamics (Sigdel et al, 2017). Other research explores how changing the time horizons and discounting rates that individuals use in conservation decisions can have differing impacts on resource level and stability in socio-ecological forest models (Henderson et al, 2016), and compares how different policies can result in different socio-ecological dynamics, some of which are more productive than others (Henderson et al, 2013). The role of population heterogeneity in the efficiency of graduated sanctions has been explored in mathematical models (Iwasa and Lee, 2013), while agent-based models enable researchers to incorporate greater socioeconomic and demographic complexity to explore human-wildlife interactions Marley et al, 2017).…”

Beyond Rewards and Punishments in the Brazilian Amazon: Practical Implications of the REDD+ Discourse

“…During the past decade, the "carrots and sticks" approach has emerged as a combination of rewards (i.e., financial incentives) and punishments (i.e., penalties) to influence behavioral change toward reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation and enhancing conservation (REDD+) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. By undertaking a discourse analysis and drawing on practical elements of REDD+ Our analysis draws from the experience of six different REDD+ initiatives in Brazil.…”