Search results

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are widespread in conservation policy. In PES, environmental effectiveness and social equity are often perceived as conflicting goals. Empirical studies on the relationship between popular design features, such as payment differentiation and payment conditionality, and effectiveness and equity are scarce. Further, they struggle with measuring and separating ecological and equity outcomes. In this study, we combine two incentivized lab-in-the-field experiments with 259 land users from eight villages in North-Western Vietnam to assess both individual conservation effort and community-level equity perceptions under four different PES designs. Effort is measured in a real-effort task with real-world environmental benefits; equity perceptions about payment designs in the real-effort task are measured in a coordination game. We demonstrate that payment design affects both effort and equity perceptions. Payments which are differentiated and are solely conditional on individuals' contributions of effort are perceived as most equitable. They are also more effective in motivating conservation effort than other designs, although the differences are small and not significant for all comparisons. By working out the positive correlation of effectiveness and equity across the four payment schemes, we show that these objectives are not necessarily conflicting goals in incentive-based conservation policy. Further, we can show that women exert greater conservation efforts. We discuss how greater equity and effectiveness could be achieved with reforms towards more input-based distribution criteria in Vietnam's PES legislation and the limitations and opportunities of the experimental paradigm for research on PES.

This paper focuses on the assessment of legislative considerations and local perceptions of equity in Vietnam's Payments for Forest Ecosystem Services scheme (PFES). Equity perceptions are powerful determinants of human behaviour and, consequently, many environmental conflicts arise from contested visions of what constitutes as 'equitable' environmental management. Therefore, equity can play an instrumental role in shaping outcomes of PFES schemes. This paper analyzes how contextual, procedural and distributive equity considerations are reflected in national PFES legislation and implementation, how equity outcomes are perceived locally, and whether local perceptions match legislative considerations. We reviewed national legislation and government reports, conducted expert interviews on the national and provincial level, as well as surveys, focus group discussions, and in-depth interviews on the local level. Our findings reveal that equity outcomes are verymuch affected by contextual factors, such as how the Forest Land Allocation regulation determines the distribution of use rights. In the implementation of PFES national aspirations and rationales of equity as outlined in legislationwere notmet due to technical constraints, financial costs, and social and institutional conflicts. The implementation on the ground contrastswith local interests. Our results show that on the local level the preference for a distributive equity principle is very much influenced by the degree of transparency of the payment distribution process. The prevailing perceptions of equitable benefit distribution by local PFES participants correspond to a merit-based principle of compensation for the effort of forest protection.