Heterogeneity Impacts of Farmers’ Participation in Payment for Ecosystem Services Based on the Collective Action Framework

Abstract

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are designed to reduce the impact of human activities on eco-sensitive areas. PES programs often adopt economic-incentive and command-control strategies. Increasing the enthusiasm of farmers’ participation is crucial for the sustainability of PES programs and ecosystem restoration. The watershed ecological compensation in Xin’an River Basin is the first horizontal ecological compensation pilot in China. In this study, economic-incentive strategy and command-control strategies in living and farming are implemented simultaneously to improve water quality. Under the collective action framework, we analyze the drivers of farmers’ participation in three concurrent strategies using hierarchical linear models (HLM). The results show: (1) Overall, 81.79%, 76.26%, and 79.11% of farmers are willing to participate in economic-incentive strategy, command-control strategy in living, and command-control strategy in farming, respectively, while 18.21%, 23.74%, and 20.89% are from the village level. (2) Among statistically significant (p < 0.01) factors at the farmer level, social trust (β = 0.305), and social participation (β = 0.134) have positive effects on the economic-incentive strategy; the number of communication and entertainment equipment has a positive effect on the willingness to participate in command-control strategy in living (β = 0.287) and command-control strategy in farming (β = 0.336). (3) At the village level, village characteristics have a direct impact on the farmers’ willingness to participate in strategies. Village woodland area is positively correlated with strategies participation. In addition, village characteristics play a moderating role by influencing farmers’ sustainable livelihood capital. We conclude that different concurrent strategies and collective actions need to be considered in the design of PES programs, particularly in ecologically sensitive areas, which can enrich the theory of collective action and the connotation of PES.

A Study on Farmers’ Participation in Environmental Protection in the Context of Rural Revitalization: The Moderating Role of Policy Environment

“…How to stimulate the endogenous power of farmers' participation is a problem worth thinking about in rural environmental protection. Existing studies have pointed out that interpersonal trust, institutional trust [4], cadre relationship [5], and resource endowment characteristics of farmers [6] all have an impact on farmers' intention to participate in environmental protection. However, according to behavioral economics theory, cognition is a prerequisite for individual behavior.…”

Differentiated impacts of landscape-level environmental contexts on residents’ environmental perceptions of China’s drylands under ecological restoration

“…A smaller ICC value indicates a lower similarity of measurements between groups. The ICC's value of 0 suggests no hierarchical structure between variables at different levels, implying that traditional models such as ordinary least squares are applicable (Qi et al 2022). The ICC can be calculated as follows:…”

Are Minority Forest Farmers Willing to Participate in Forest Man-Agement? Evidence from the Minority Regions of Southwest China

“…As shown in Table 2, in terms of the factors at the level of individual socioeconomic attributes of farmers, based on human capital and social capital considerations in the sustainable livelihoods framework, individual and social resource and capital endowments have different degrees of influence on forest management behavior, philosophy, and willingness; therefore, the factors that affect the willingness to engage in forest management include farmer's identity, education level, living standard, forest land area [60], forest land function type, and other factors that will constrain forest landowners' management efficiency, future management risk, and judgment of management philosophy. In terms of factors at the level of forest landowners' perceptions and related experiences, forest landowners judge the ease of future operation and benefits based on their perceptions of the operation mode [61] and their actual participation in forestry-related projects in the past [62], so as to assess whether it is worthwhile to continue operation in the future, and therefore, three variables including the perceptions of joint-family operation and large-scale operation, and the participation of returning farmland to forestry and grass are summarized.…”