The effectiveness of biodiversity conservation initiatives depends on their ability to maintain and restore the integrity and connectivity of ecological systems. Payments for environmental services (PES) can encourage farmers to set aside land for conservation, but landscape connectivity requires coordination among land users. Fairness in the distribution of payoffs has been shown to affect conservation efforts in response to PES, but the sources of inequality in payment allocation mechanisms can be manifold. Here we focus on the performance of conservation incentives under alternative payment modalities and levels of inequality in land ownership. We applied lab-in-the-field experiment with 384 Tanzanian farmers from two ecological corridors. Groups of participants were endowed with either equal or unequal amounts of hypothetical farmland and subsequently exposed to two treatments, namely a fixed individual payment and a fixed payment with an agglomeration bonus. Both payment modalities had positive effects on conservation, but we find no strong evidence for impact of asymmetries in landownership on conservation decisions. Overall, our results suggest that conditional payments can be effective even when land with high conservation value is unequally distributed in ecological corridors.

中文翻译：

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土地所有权不对称下生物多样性保护的激励措施

生物多样性保护举措的有效性取决于其维持和恢复生态系统完整性和连通性的能力。环境服务付费（PES）可以鼓励农民留出土地进行保护，但景观连通性需要土地使用者之间的协调。回报分配的公平性已被证明会影响针对 PES 的保护工作，但支付分配机制中不平等的根源可能是多方面的。在这里，我们重点关注替代支付方式下保护激励措施的绩效以及土地所有权不平等程度。我们对来自两个生态走廊的 384 名坦桑尼亚农民进行了现场实验室实验。参与者群体被赋予等量或不等量的假设农田，随后接受两种处理，即固定个人付款和带有集群奖金的固定付款。两种支付方式都对保护产生积极影响，但我们没有发现强有力的证据表明土地所有权不对称对保护决策的影响。总体而言，我们的结果表明，即使具有高保护价值的土地在生态走廊中分布不均，有条件支付也可能有效。