Number of PAs with status by periods of creation.

Protected areas are the most prevalent strategy to mitigate biodiversity loss and deforestation, especially in biodiversity hotspots like Madagascar. This pre-analysis plan outlines the data, methods, and identification strategy that will be used to assess the impact on deforestation of terrestrial protected areas created in Madagascar between 2002 and 2022. We will employ coarsened exact matching and difference-in-differences methods to evaluate forest cover loss, leveraging 24 years of high-resolution satellite data. We will incorporate buffer zones to assess spillover and leakage effects. This study addresses limitations of previous ones by combining accurate protected area delimitation and characteristics, a longer temporal coverage, improved characterization of the diverse forest ecosystems, and state-of-the art econometric methods. We will then assess heterogeneity of conservation effects, to better understand the determinants of protected area effectiveness.保护区是减缓生物多样性丧失与森林砍伐的最为广泛采用的策略，在马达加斯加这类生物多样性热点区（biodiversity hotspot）中尤为关键。本预分析方案梳理了将用于评估2002至2022年间马达加斯加境内新建陆地保护区对森林砍伐影响的相关数据、研究方法与识别策略。本研究将借助24年高分辨率卫星数据，采用粗化精确匹配（coarsened exact matching）与双重差分法（difference-in-differences）评估森林覆盖损失情况，并纳入缓冲区以考察溢出效应与渗漏效应。本研究通过整合精准的保护区划界与属性特征、更长的时间覆盖跨度、对多样森林生态系统的精细化刻画，以及前沿计量经济学方法，弥补了既往研究的诸多局限。后续本研究还将评估保护效应的异质性，以更深入地解析保护区有效性的决定因素。