Spatial incentives to coordinate contiguous habitat

This paper discusses a series of economic experiments designed to explore whether a set of conservation subsidies—called the agglomeration bonus—can induce a socially optimal spatial pattern of conservation given landowner land retirement decisions are voluntary. The novelty of our approach is the use of the agglomeration bonus idea which depends on explicit topological relationships between a unit of conserved land and its neighboring conserved land; specifically, subsidies paid when one conserved land unit borders other conserved units. The agglomeration bonus approach is refined by providing a menu of subsidies and penalties that can used to encourage particular patterns of land preservation voluntarily. Our results suggest the agglomeration bonus—once our subjects gain experience with coordination—can achieve the specific contiguous land preservation pattern that was targeted.

[1]  G. Parkhurst,et al.  Does complexity reduce coordination? , 2005 .

[2]  Vincent P. Crawford,et al.  A Survey of Experiments on Communication via Cheap Talk , 1998 .

[3]  Bruno Broseta,et al.  Adaptive Learning and Equilibrium Selection in Experimental Coordination Games: An ARCH(1) Approach , 2000, Games Econ. Behav..

[4]  S. Sarkar,et al.  Systematic conservation planning , 2000, Nature.

[5]  Robert Forsythe,et al.  Selection Criteria in Coordination Games: Some Experimental Results , 1987 .

[6]  J. Kagel,et al.  Handbook of Experimental Economics , 1997 .

[7]  S. Swallow,et al.  Spatial Interactions in Multiple-Use Forestry and Substitution and Wealth Effects for the Single Stand , 1993 .

[8]  S. Alpern,et al.  Spatial Dispersion as a Dynamic Coordination Problem , 2002 .

[9]  Jason F. Shogren,et al.  Agglomeration bonus: an incentive mechanism to reunite fragmented habitat for biodiversity conservation , 2002 .

[10]  James A. Cox,et al.  Movement Corridors: Conservation Bargains or Poor Investments? , 1992 .

[11]  Teck-Hua Ho,et al.  Sophisticated Experience-Weighted Attraction Learning and Strategic Teaching in Repeated Games , 2002, J. Econ. Theory.

[12]  Todd L. Cherry,et al.  Endogenous Timing in a Gaming Tournament , 1999 .

[13]  R. Engelman,et al.  Human population in the biodiversity hotspots , 2000, Nature.

[14]  Siegfried K. Berninghaus,et al.  Time horizon and equilibrium selection in tacit coordination games: Experimental results , 1998 .

[15]  A. Rapoport,et al.  Coordination, “Magic,” and Reinforcement Learning in a Market Entry Game , 1998 .

[16]  D. Parker,et al.  The geography of market failure: Edge-effect externalities and the location and production patterns of organic farming , 2007 .

[17]  Thomas A. Rhoads,et al.  Regulation through Collaboration: Final Authority and Information Symmetry in Environmental Coasean Bargaining , 2003 .

[18]  J. Shogren,et al.  Protecting Endangered Species in the United States: Protecting Species on Private Land , 2001 .

[19]  G. Helfand,et al.  Spreading versus Concentrating Damages: Environmental Policy in the Presence of Nonconvexities , 1994 .

[20]  Heidi J. Albers,et al.  Modeling Ecological Constraints on Tropical Forest Management: Spatial Interdependence, Irreversibility, and Uncertainty , 1996 .

[21]  S. A. Temple.  Conservation Biologists and Wildlife Managers Getting Together , 1992 .

[22]  François Bousquet,et al.  Multi-agent simulations and ecosystem management: a review , 2004 .

[23]  J. Huyck,et al.  Tacit Coordination Games, Strategic Uncertainty, and Coordination Failure , 1990 .

[24]  T. Schelling,et al.  The Strategy of Conflict. , 1961 .

[25]  Oscar E. Gaggiotti,et al.  Ecology, genetics, and evolution of metapopulations , 2004 .