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After four decades of refining our understanding of decision-making processes, a form of consensus has developed around the crucial role that behavioral science can play in changing non-cooperative decisions and promoting pro-environmental behaviors. However, has behavioral science delivered on its promise to influence environmental policy and conservation practice? We discuss key lessons coming from studies into the dual process theory of thinking and the presence of cognitive biases, social norms and intrinsic motivations. We then discuss the empirical findings by reviewing relevant research published over the past five years, and identify emerging lessons. Recent studies focus on providing feedback, manipulating framing, using green nudges, or activating social norms on urban contexts, mainly energy and water. Interventions are needed in the context of common pool resources in the global south. We end by discussing the great potential for scaling-up programs and interventions, but there are still challenges for research and practice.

This paper presents novel evidence of no crowding out, of either motivations or donations, among those terminated from an ongoing program of payments for ecosystem services (PES) in Colombia. PES programs have risen in number. However, claims about perverse impacts after programs end could inhibit their growth. PES end for different reasons (planned duration, budget reduction, issues in implementation) and in different ways (some participants or all). An expressed concern for PES is that receiving payments lowers conservation, after PES end, if participants’ intrinsic motivations for conservation are ‘crowded out’ by financial incentives.We test for crowding out by an ongoing program in which some but not all contracts were terminated. We see no evidence of crowding out, since neither the motivations nor the donations for the terminated farmers are significantly different than for non-PES land owners (and this is robust to matching on levels of assets, residence on farm past donation behavior, main economic activity, and participation in collective activities). Our results add evidence from an actual PES to literature questioning the relevance, importance and even sign of crowding effects., JEL: H0, Q28, D91

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes incentivise landowners to maintain, restore or enhance ecosystem services. Currently, there are more than 550 active PES programmes worldwide, expected to support conservation efforts and, ideally, to also reduce rural poverty. In this article we explore the discourses that underpin PES debates and practice in Colombia, a late-comer to the PES agenda in Latin-America. Informed by interviews with PES actors and Q-methodology (n = 41), we identify three PES discourses: conservation conduit, contextual conservation, and inconvenient conservation. The narratives diverge in their framing of deforestation processes; their most preferred PES design features; the likely role of payments in changing people’s motivations to conserve biodiversity over time; and the potential effectiveness of PES, specifically when the latter aim to contribute to peace-building efforts and reducing illicit crop cultivation. The conservation conduit and contextual discourse are by far the most popular, while the inconvenient conservation narrative is only endorsed by academic actors. This suggests the existence of a broad community which believes PES are a pragmatic conservation strategy and who supports PES because payments can correct the often-uneven distribution of conservation costs and benefits. This overall positive engagement with PES, we argue, may facilitate the increase and upscaling of PES initiatives throughout the country, provided that funding and other supporting social conditions are met.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 Most of the literature on the causes of tropical deforestation has focused on the proximate and distal causes. However, research exploring the psychological drivers of deforestation, i.e., motivations, is still scant despite being crucial to understand the processes of land-use change and individual decision making within social-ecological systems. We studied the combined effect of structural and individual causes of deforestation, with particular emphasis on motivations, for a sample of rural households in Colombia's foremost tropical deforestation frontier. We implemented a new instrument based on self-determination theory to measure five different types of motivations to protect the forests: intrinsic, guilt/regret, social, extrinsic motivations, and amotivation (lack of motivation). Our findings show that, controlling for the structural and household drivers widely identified in the deforestation literature, intrinsic motivations positively correlate with less self-reported deforestation. Also, amotivated people and those with extrinsic motives, such as expected payments for conservation, are more likely to deforest. Our results show that motivations can explain variation in land-use decisions and thus should be considered when designing, implementing, and evaluating conservation policies aiming to halt deforestation.

We implemented a decision experiment in the field with rural peasants in Colombia to test the effects of introducing then partially or totally removing Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES). We consider individual and collective payments and different rules for removal. We find that there is clearly no behavioral ‘crowding-out’ when a PES is created then ended. Even a simple pre-versus-post-PES comparison finds ‘crowding in’, if anything, with contributions higher after PES was removed than before PES was introduced. Comparing to a control, without PES, strengthens that conclusion. We discuss four possible mechanisms explaining these findings: recognition or gratitude; lack of negative emotions; pre-existing and persistent intrinsic motivations, and evocation of pro-environmental behavior.

En lugares expuestos a altos niveles de violencia, sentirse inseguro puede afectar a las relaciones sociales. Por ejemplo, al caminar por una calle oscura y observar que alguien necesita ayuda, las personas que se sienten inseguras pueden pensárselo dos veces antes de prestarla. Un estudio de nuestro grupo intentó comprender la relación entre sentirse inseguro y la disposición a cooperar, a ser altruista y a confiar en los demás. Para esto, diseñamos una encuesta de percepciones de inseguridad e implementamos experimentos económicos para medir los niveles de cooperación, confianza, reciprocidad y altruismo en habitantes de municipios rurales en Colombia. Nuestros resultados indican que las personas que se sienten más inseguras confían más en los demás, pero su tendencia a cooperar para la provisión de un bien público se reduce.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 Globally, there is an increasing level of funding targeted to pay farmers and rural communities for the provision of ecosystem services, for example through Payments for Ecosystem or Environmental Services (PES) schemes and pilots for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, and maintaining or enhancing forest carbon stocks (REDD +). Therefore, there is growing interest in understanding the effects of economic incentives on participants' behavior and motivations. We adopt here an innovative research design to test for motivational crowding effects through a forest conservation game in Colombia's Amazon Piedmont, using individual, collective and crop-price premium economic incentives. We implement a post-experiment survey on different types of motivations based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to test for changes in motivations. Our findings show that all types of PES, except for the crop-price premium payment, increased conservation behavior in the experiment. However, not all types of payments affected motivations equally: collective payments enhanced social motivations to protect forests and the crop-price premium reduced intrinsic and guilt/regret related motivations. These findings contribute to disentangling the interaction between incentives, motivations and behaviors in a context of agricultural expansion and growing concern for forest conservation.

Subjective insecurity is a key determinant of different forms of prosocial behavior. In Study 1, we used field experiments with farmers in Colombian villages exposed to different levels of violence to investigate how individual perceptions of insecurity affect cooperation, trust, reciprocity and altruism. To do so, we developed a cognitive-affective measure of subjective insecurity. We found that subjective insecurity has a negative effect on cooperation but influences trust and altruism positively. In Study 2, carried out three years after Study 1, we repeated the initial design with additional measures of victimization. Our goal was to relate subjective insecurity with actual victimization. The findings of Study 2 support the initial results, and are robust and consistent for cooperative behavior and trust when including victimization as a mediator. Different indicators of victimization are positively correlated with subjective insecurity and an aggregate index of victimization has a negative effect on cooperation but exerts a positive influence on trust.

Subjective insecurity is a key determinant of different forms of prosocial behavior. In Study 1, we used field experiments with farmers in Colombian villages exposed to different levels of violence to investigate how individual perceptions of insecurity affect cooperation, trust, reciprocity and altruism. To do so, we developed a cognitive-affective measure of subjective insecurity. We found that subjective insecurity has a negative effect on cooperation but influences trust and altruism positively. In Study 2, carried out three years after Study 1, we repeated the initial design with additional measures of victimization. Our goal was to relate subjective insecurity with actual victimization. The findings of Study 2 support the initial results, and are robust and consistent for cooperative behavior and trust when including victimization as a mediator. Different indicators of victimization are positively correlated with subjective insecurity and an aggregate index of victimization has a negative effect on cooperation but exerts a positive influence on trust.

Spanish Abstract: Las medidas de percepcion de inseguridad capturan la sensacion de amenaza y miedo que siente una persona por su vida, la de sus allegados o sus libertades basicas. Al ser un indicador centrado en el individuo y basado no solo en datos objetivos de violencia sino tambien en sus habilidades para manejar situaciones de estres, la percepcion que un individuo tiene sobre su seguridad refleja un marco psicologico que puede llevar a cambios en sus comportamientos. Este documento explora la relacion que existe entre las percepciones de inseguridad y la cooperacion y confianza usando experimentos economicos y encuestas con 760 participantes en cuatro municipios rurales de Antioquia, Colombia. Los resultados cuantitativos indican que la percepcion de inseguridad tiene una relacion negativa con la disposicion a la cooperacion, pero positiva con la confianza. Es decir, a mayor percepcion de inseguridad, menor cooperacion en el juego de bienes publicos y mayor cantidad enviada en el juego de la confianza. Este resultado se puede explicar por cambios en las preferencias sociales de las personas que llevan a que por miedo no participen en esfuerzos colectivos, pero si confien en su nucleo mas cercano. English Abstract: Measures of perceptions of insecurity capture individuals’ sense of threat and fear for their own life, their relatives’ or their basic freedoms. As an individual-centered measure, perceptions of insecurity are based not only in real violent facts, but also on individual’s ability to cope with stressful situations. As such, perceptions of insecurity reflect a psychological mindset that can exert an influence on people’s behaviors. This research explores how perceptions of insecurity affect cooperation and trust using field experiments and surveys with 760 farmers in four rural municipalities in Colombia. Quantitative analysis indicates people’s feelings of insecurity negatively affect contributions in the public good games, but affect in a positive manner amounts sent in the trust game. These results may suggest fear has an effect on individuals’ social preferences that leads to a decrease on collective action but in an increase of trust within their community.