Institutional analysis of payments for watershed services in the western United States

Payments for watershed services (PWS) have emerged as one of the fastest growing segments of the broader conservation strategy of payments for ecosystem services over the past decade. Institutional factors are key to the design and performance of PWS, yet empirical research remains a gap in the literature. Here, we collected and analysed information on the institutional characteristics of the 41 active PWS programs in 2012 in the western United States, a region containing one of the highest concentrations of PWS globally. Cluster analysis identified four main groupings around buyer types and management actions. Many programs pursued a PWS structure as a new approach, often including participants in new roles (e.g., nongovernmental organizations as facilitating transactions), to comply with existing regulations or addressing escalating water resource threats. Our results highlight the important interactions between overarching regional factors (e.g., federal policies, water rights) and diverse local conditions (e.g., land ownership, resource challenges) in shaping the institutional structure of individual PWS programs. A key gap remains collecting robust information on PWS performance. As such, this work provides a baseline for future longitudinal institutional analysis to link program structure and performance to inform PWS research and practice.