Targeting Incentives to Reduce Habitat Fragmentation

Lewis, D. J.; Plantinga, Andrew J.; Wu, Junjie

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8276.2009.01310.x

Cited by 55 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Several papers have investigated policies that make payments to landowners a function of the decisions of neighboring landowners (e.g., Parkhurst et al, 2002;Parkhurst and Shogren, 2007). In work closer to the present paper, Lewis and Plantinga (2007) and Lewis et al (2009) combine an econometric model of landowner decisions with GIS-based landscape simulations to examine the ability of simple incentive policies to reduce habitat fragmentation in South Carolina. Using a biological model that considers habitat pattern and species' ability to disperse across patches of habitat, Nelson et al (2008) compare species conservation outcomes under five simple policy alternatives with efficient solutions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

The efficiency of voluntary incentive policies for preventing biodiversity loss

Lewis

Plantinga

Nelson

et al. 2011

Resource and Energy Economics

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A B S T R A C THabitat loss is a primary cause of loss of biodiversity but conserving habitat for species presents challenges. Land parcels differ in their ability to produce returns for landowners and landowners may have private information about the value of the land to them. Land parcels also differ in the type and quality of habitat and the spatial pattern of land use across multiple landowners is important for determining the conservation value of parcels. This paper analyzes the relative efficiency of simple voluntary incentive-based policies in achieving biodiversity conservation objectives. This topic is important not just for biodiversity conservation but for any effort to provide a public good requiring coordination across multiple decision-makers who have some degree of private information. We develop a method that integrates spatially explicit data, an econometric model of private land-use decisions, landscape simulations, a biological model of biodiversity as a function of landscape pattern, and an algorithm that estimates the set of efficient solutions. These methods allow us to simulate landowner responses to policies, measure the consequences of these decisions for biodiversity conservation, and compare these outcomes to efficient outcomes to show the relative efficiency of various policy

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

The efficiency of voluntary incentive policies for preventing biodiversity loss

Lewis

Plantinga

Nelson

et al. 2011

Resource and Energy Economics

Self Cite

120

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“…Several recent papers examine the impact of social norms and reputation effects on the conservation efforts of landowners in the presence of financial incentives (Banerjee and Shogren, 2012;Sorice et al, 2011;Chen et al, 2009). Plantinga, 2007 andLewis et al (2009) examine the use of incentive payments to reduce habitat fragmentation. A series of theoretical papers investigate methods of providing incentives for conservation program participants to enroll spatially contiguous habitat.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial interactions in habitat conservation: Evidence from prairie pothole easements

Lawley

Yang

2015

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management

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a b s t r a c tWe examine the role of spatial interactions in conservation easements placed on prairie pothole habitat in western Canada. One of the goals of the conservation easement program we study is to protect contiguous habitat. We identify endogenous spatial interactions among conservation easements and government protected land, independent of spatially correlated landscape features and local economic shocks that influence easement enrollment. We present evidence that easements increase the likelihood of subsequent easements on neighboring land. Government-protected land appears to have little effect on the location of conservation easements. These results imply that conservation agencies have leveraged past conservation investment to enroll more contiguous habitat in permanent easements through a combination of targeting and positive social interactions among neighboring landowners.

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“…The early literature has progressed from using simple measures of neighboring land use to modeling the effect of development patterns on habitat fragmentation (Lewis and Plantinga 2007). More recently, greater consideration of biological and spatial complexity has been incorporated into land conservation models that seek to identify an optimal spatial arrangement of land use that maximizes ecological benefits, such as species and habitat conservation (Lewis et al 2009;Nelson et al 2008;Newburn and Berck 2006). These and other studies use a spatially explicit econometric model to estimate the reduced form parameters of a model of rural landowners' land use and conservation decisions and then use these estimated parameters to simulate conservation outcomes under alternative policy scenarios.…”

Section: Modeling Coupled Ecological-economic Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%