Unraveling the effects of payments for ecosystem services on motivations for collective action

- We study the impact of PES in the context of agricultural biodiversity conservation.
- A framed field experiment was conducted with Peruvian farmers in the Andes.
- Results show that generally individual rewards outperform collective rewards.
- Collective rewards perform best when communication is allowed for or in socially close groups.

This paper addresses the differential impacts on decisions towards collective action in the context of payments for ecosystem services (PES) where individual and collective rewards are conditional on a minimum collective conservation level being achieved. Interactions between the different reward types, farmers' social preferences, social ties and communication are identified. A field game experiment is conducted with Andean farmers in Peru and framed around their decisions to conserve agrobiodiversity as an impure public good. The main results are that PES schemes could be effective in motivating collective action for agrobiodiversity conservation and that individual rewards are likely to be more effective and less sensitive to social factors than collective rewards. The latter might have a positive effect on conservation when they are shared within socially closely-related groups or in situations where communication and deliberation about collective action are possible.