Designing voluntary incentives for efficient private forest conservation

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25870362
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Economic policy; Economic theory
• Research Institution: Kyoto University
• Principal Investigator: Mitani Yohei 京都大学, 農学研究科, 准教授 (70647172)
• Research Collaborator: LINDHJEM Henrik ノルウェー自然研究所 ; DAY Brett イーストアングリア大学 ; FLORES Nicholas コロラド大学
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 実験経済学 / 森林保全 / インセティブ設計 / フィールド実験 / 自発的参加

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We first analyze what motivates Norwegian forest owners to participate in a national voluntary conservation program. The results suggest that forest owners’ expectation of sustainable non-timber income enhanced by the program has strong positive effects on the likelihood of participation. Second, we propose a hierarchical agglomeration bonus mechanism to create incentives for agents in a hierarchical spatial structure to promote coordination among agents at desired spatial levels. The results show that allocating a higher portion of the total agglomeration bonus to local-level bonuses sharply reduces coordination failure and facilitates a consensus on selecting the payoff dominant strategy at the local-level, leading to a larger-scale, global-level successful coordination. The results suggest that the locally weighted scheme can contribute to habitat connectivity as well as successful global coordination.

Free Research Field

経済学