When the Implementation of Payments for Biodiversity Conservation Leads to Motivation Crowding-out: A Case Study From the Cardamoms Forests, Cambodia

In-kind conservation payments crowd in environmental values and increase support for government intervention: A randomized trial in Bolivia

“…Our results contrast with other prior studies that found evidence of motivation crowding in conservation incentive programs (Agrawal, Chhatre & Gerber 2015;Chervier, Le Velly & Ezzine-de-Blas 2019;García-Amado, Pérez & García 2013;Moros, Valez & Corbera 2019), and corroborate arguments that fears of motivation crowding in PES may be overstated (Andersson et al 2018;Handberg & Angelsen 2019;Kaczan, Swallow & Adamowicz 2019). However, we are cautious in generalizing these results to other incentive programs, as we believe contrasting results are due to differences in specific design features.…”

Commodity-Centric Landscape Governance as a Double-Edged Sword: The Case of Soy and the Cerrado Working Group in Brazil

“…There is a growing literature on how payments affect motivations for conservation (Rode et al, 2015;Ezzinede-Blas et al, 2019). Empirical studies suggest that in contexts of social conflict-as the Cerrado-PES is likely to undermine environmental outcomes over time through the crowding out of intrinsic motivations 18 , especially where payments are perceived to strengthen pre-existing power inequalities and contribute to unfair distribution of conservation costs and benefits (Costedoat et al, 2016;Chervier et al, 2019). There is also anecdotal evidence of farmers in Mesoamerica threatening to cut their forests if payments were discontinued (Kaimowitz, 2008).…”

Consumption and Biodiversity Conservation: Insights from Behavioral Science Using the MINDSPACE Approach

“…While much depends on the local context, crowding-out may be more likely with topdown schemes that offer small incentives and are poorly targeted (Akers and Yasué 2019). For instance, Chervier et al (2017) found that a payment for ecosystems (PES) scheme negatively impacted on the perceived values of forest-based communities in Cambodia, from subsistencerelated to money-related values, and that individuals emphasizing money-related values reported significantly more frequently that they would break conservation rules after an eventual end of payments, raising questions for the program effectiveness in the long term. Others find crowd-in may also be possible, i.e., increase in intrinsic motivation and values due to price incentives; this has been more likely when schemes deeply engage with informal community networks and leverage cultural values (Akers and Yasué 2019).…”