Spatial incentives to coordinate contiguous habitat

This paper discusses a series of economic experiments designed to explore whether a set of conservation subsidies—called the agglomeration bonus—can induce a socially optimal spatial pattern of conservation given landowner land retirement decisions are voluntary. The novelty of our approach is the u...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecological economics 2007-12, Vol.64 (2), p.344-355
Main Authors: Parkhurst, Gregory M., Shogren, Jason F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Economic analysis
Ecosystem services
Ecosystems
Land use
Nature conservation
Spatial analysis
Subsidies
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper discusses a series of economic experiments designed to explore whether a set of conservation subsidies—called the agglomeration bonus—can induce a socially optimal spatial pattern of conservation given landowner land retirement decisions are voluntary. The novelty of our approach is the use of the agglomeration bonus idea which depends on explicit topological relationships between a unit of conserved land and its neighboring conserved land; specifically, subsidies paid when one conserved land unit borders other conserved units. The agglomeration bonus approach is refined by providing a menu of subsidies and penalties that can used to encourage particular patterns of land preservation voluntarily. Our results suggest the agglomeration bonus—once our subjects gain experience with coordination—can achieve the specific contiguous land preservation pattern that was targeted.
ISSN:0921-8009
1873-6106
DOI:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2007.07.009