Exploring motives for participation in a perpetual easement program: Going beyond financial incentives

Kemink, Kaylan, Diedrich, Amy, Adams, Vanessa M., and Pressey, Robert L. (2023) Exploring motives for participation in a perpetual easement program: Going beyond financial incentives. Biological Conservation, 284. 110193.

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Abstract

Private land conservation has become an important element of the global conservation portfolio. Often, landowners are encouraged to participate in private land conservation with financial incentives. However, there is a concern that financial incentives may be limited given the ephemeral nature of funding. Financial incentives also have the potential to crowd-out participation from landowners motivated by altruistic factors rather than financial ones. These concerns underscore the importance of understanding drivers of participation in conservation programs. While there is a plethora of studies examining motivations for participation in term-limited conservation programs, there are far fewer that look at landowners' reasons for participating in perpetual programs. We examined landowners' non-financial motivations for participation in a United States Fish and Wildlife perpetual easement program using several analytical approaches. We first looked at correlations between the likelihood of participation in the easement program and survey respondent's beliefs, values, norms, and perceived behavioral control using a Bayesian regression analysis. Next, using a cluster analysis we segmented our landowner sample into two groups, tested for differences between the group theoretical constructs, and looked for patterns in geographic distributions of the clusters. Our results suggested that individuals who accepted responsibility for habitat protection and recognized habitat threats were more likely to have participated in the easement program. We did not find significant demographic patterns in our cluster analysis but did see differences across the tested theoretical constructs of theory of planned behavior and value-belief norm theory. Further exploration of variation revealed potential for conservation opportunities and allowed us to make recommendations for future policy actions.

Item ID: 79472
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1873-2917
Keywords: Conservation easement, Private land conservation, Theory of planned behavior, Value-belief norm theory
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Copyright Information: © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Date Deposited: 30 Aug 2023 04:34
FoR Codes: 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410401 Conservation and biodiversity @ 50%
41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410404 Environmental management @ 50%
SEO Codes: 18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1899 Other environmental management > 189999 Other environmental management not elsewhere classified @ 100%
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