Payments for ecosystem services and motivation crowding in the Amazon Piedmont

Globally, there is an increasing level of funding being targeted to pay ecosystem services providers directly to support positive environmental behavior, and particularly forest conservation, for example through Payment for... [ view full abstract ]

Globally, there is an increasing level of funding being targeted to pay ecosystem services providers directly to support positive environmental behavior, and particularly forest conservation, for example through Payment for Ecosystem or Environmental Services (PES) schemes and pilots of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) initiatives. In this context, there is a growing concern about the temporal stability of positive environmental behaviors once economic incentives are introduced or removed. We implemented an innovative research design to test for motivation crowding and to distinguish changes in behaviors from changes in motivations with potential PES recipients in the colombian Amazon Piedmont. We test for the effect of individual, collective or crop-price premium incentives on motivation crowding, using a forest conservation game and a post-experiment survey on different types of motivations based on Self-Determination Theory to test for changes in motivations. Our findings show that collective payments for ecosystem services not only increase forest conservation levels in the game, but also crowd-in motivations related to peer pressure. Payments that involve crop-price premium reduce forest conservation levels and crowd-out intrinsic and guilt/regret related motivations. This research contributes to disentangling the interaction between incentives, motivations and behaviors in the context of forest conservation and agriculture expansion.