Motivational crowding in PES: experiment results

Nature is perceived and valued in many different ways. Often, the types of
values that are the most important to people depend on how they
cognitively frame desirable human-nature relations. For instance, the
value of nature can be seen through a utilitarian lens, e.g., as providing
ecosystem services for humans. Alternatively, it can also be considered
valuable for non-instrumental reasons, e.g., for its sacred or spiritual
significance. In this paper, we use a framed field experiment to test how
people belonging to three distinct communities in Colombia (Indigenous,
Afro-Colombian, and Campesino) respond to different ways of framing
payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes, so as to assess potential
motivational crowding effects of pro-social/intrinsic motivations for
forest conservation. The experimental results indicate that crowding-in of
intrinsic motivations for forest conservation occurred in participants
from the Indigenous community when the PES scheme was framed in a way that
highlighted relational values of the forest. By contrast, motivational
crowding-in took place for participants in the framed field experiment
from the Campesino community when the PES scheme was introduced in a way
that highlighted instrumental values instead. Participants from the
Afro-Colombian community did not show evidence of motivational crowding
under either framing. Together, these results suggest that PES schemes
that are framed in a way that harmonizes with locally salient human-nature
relational models and associated values are more likely to cause
motivational crowding-in, and thus encourage higher rates of environmental
conservation, even after payments are discontinued.