Advancing models of land use and management

This research examines individuals’ decisions to participate in payment for ecosystem services programs, which provide financial remuneration to offset the costs that landowners may incur when adopting land management strategies. In this project, the researchers consider factors that potentially explain why individuals vary in their willingness to join payment programs. Using experimental methods and simulations, the researchers examine the importance of individual preferences, norms of behavior, demographic variation, environmental heterogeneity, and programmatic messaging as predictors of participation. The project also enhances the education and training of undergraduate students who assist with the research. This project combines economic experiments, spatially explicit agent-based models, and landscape pattern analysis to understand how interactions between individual preferences and institutional design drive land use and management patterns. The experimental design parallels the decisions faced by individuals who are involved with payment programs. The experiments are conducted both with individuals and with specialists, including private forest landowners, land use professionals, and economists. In turn, the experimental results are used to parameterize the agent-based models, which facilitate inferences about the importance of individuals’ motivations and spatial considerations, respectively. Results are disseminated to officials and organizations. Software developed as part of this project is made available for future research. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.