Why do forests keep disappearing despite conservation interventions? The answer requires an unobservable counterfactual: a world in which these interventions never occurred. For 28 countries that account for 87% of global deforestation, we simulate counterfactual deforestation driven solely by agricultural profits. Under this scenario, deforestation rates would have increased by more than twice the observed rate relative to 2001-2004, so deforestation reduced relative to the counterfactual. However, correlations between reductions in deforestation in some countries and additional deforestation in others suggest that 43% of the reductions we have identified (23.9 ± 0.744 million hectares) were offset by leakage. If all 28 countries had achieved reductions comparable to the six most successful, global deforestation would have been 15.8% lower than in 2001-2004. Eliminating profit-oriented deforestation would require annual conservation payments of US$59 billion (<1% of sample GDP). Our framework enables transparent evaluation of conservation progress based on a parsimonious land-change model and supports monitoring at continental and global scales.

In this paper, we review recent advances in the field of economic incentives for biodiversity conservation, focusing on incentives offered to private landowners to change how they manage land. Due to market failures, profit-maximizing land-use decisions are rarely consistent with optimal provision of biodiversity. As a result, it has been argued that additional financial incentives are needed to slow global biodiversity decline and aid biodiversity recovery. The paper organizes recent literature along four thematic lines: paying for results rather than actions, incentives for spatial coordination, collective participation schemes, and biodiversity offset markets.

Financial incentives encourage the plantation of new woodland to increase woodland habitat, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration, as a contribution to meeting climate change and biodiversity conservation targets. Whilst these are largely positive effects, it is worth considering that this expansion of woodland can lead to increased presence of wildlife species in proximity to agricultural holdings that may pose an enhanced risk of disease transmission between wildlife and livestock. Wildlife and the provision of an enhanced reservoir for infectious disease is particularly important in the transmission dynamics of bovine tuberculosis, the case studied here.In this paper we develop an economic model for predicting changes in land use resulting from subsidies for woodland planting. We use this to assess the consequent impact on wild deer populations in the newly created woodland areas, and thus the emergent infectious disease risk arising from the proximity of new and existing wild deer populations and existing cattle holdings.We consider an area in the South-West of Scotland, having existing woodland, deer populations, and extensive and diverse cattle farm holdings. In this area we find that, with a varying level of subsidy and plausible new woodland creation scenarios, the contact risk between areas of wild deer and cattle increases between 26% and 35% over the risk present with a zero subsidy.This provides a foundation for extending to larger regions and for examining potential risk mitigation strategies, for example the targeting of planting subsidy in low disease risk areas, or provisioning for buffer zones between woodland and agricultural holdings.

Secure land tenure is crucial for sustainable land use, influencing landowners' willingness to engage in conservation. This paper estimates the effects of conservation easements (CE) on rural households' perceived tenure security which would in turn impact the conservation efficacy of CEs. A conceptual framework linking changes in forestland tenure arrangements to perceived tenure security is proposed in the analysis. Based on data from a face-to-face survey with 305 households in 16 administrative villages, the analysis uses difference-in-differences with propensity score matching estimation techniques to test the effects in the context of China. The empirical results suggest that CEs have no significant impacts on perceived tenure security, measured by reported forestland conflicts and perceived likelihood of expropriation and reallocation. However, a subgroup regression shows that households with more privately managed forest plots perceive a rise in the likelihood of expropriation, highlighting the need for consideration of land tenure contexts in incentive-based conservation programs.

We present the first estimate of the causal effect of auditory sensation on willingness to pay and the first estimate of the marginal value of bird song, using constructed soundscapes. We compare willingness to pay values for increases in bird wildlife habitat quality and quantity between samples where respondents are played recordings of soundscapes compared to respondents who do not get to listen to these simulated soundscapes. Willingness to pay for habitat quality enhancements were found to be significantly larger in the treated "with soundscapes" sample, mainly due to treatment reducing cost sensitivity. Methodologically, this paper reports on the use of simulated soundscapes in choice experiments as a means of increasing the information respondents have before making their choices.

Estimates of the social costs of tropical deforestation vary widely, largely because they rely on static valuations of ecosystem services that ignore uncertainty in future discount rates and the changing value of those services. Relative price changes (RPC) of ecosystem services describe their annual relative value increase when their scarcity and human income grow. Here, we develop a dynamic approach to quantify the social costs of tropical deforestation, accounting for combined discount rate and RPC uncertainties. Applying the approach to the Brazilian Legal Amazon, we find that the social costs of deforestation increase by 47% (reference year 2025) when accounting for deterministic RPC, mostly due to the income effect. Considering only uncertainty in the discount rate, social costs were elevated by 22%. The combined effect of the discount rate and RPC uncertainty finally raised the social costs of deforestation by an additional 38%. This results in a 102% increase in the total social costs of deforestation (3% present value), equivalent to +1.441 trillion US$, compared to using constant economic values for ecosystem services. The resulting distributions of Monte Carlo-simulated social costs of deforestation showed fat right tails, driven by trajectories with low discount rates and RPC close to the discount rate. Jointly accounting for two key, but often-neglected determinants, our novel estimates reveal substantially enhanced social costs of tropical deforestation, strengthening the economic case for ambitious and sustained efforts to conserve tropical forests.

Despite significant policy interventions and conservation initiatives, incentives for the conservation of biodiversity have been criticised for being ecologically ineffective and economically inefficient. This paper examines a novel approach to improve the ecological and economic performance of such incentives. Specifically, we analyse the ecological and economic effectiveness of a targeting bonus which establishes a two-part subsidy for changes to land management when the ecological benefits of such changes vary spatially. Using a spatially explicit mathematical programming model applied to an empirical case study in the UK, we show that a targeting bonus has the potential to enhance efficiency, with the magnitude of gains depending on the strength of the spatial correlation between opportunity costs and ecological benefits, as well as the size of the budget and the definition of the targeting zone. We find that the targeting bonus offers major advantages when the most ecologically beneficial land parcels are positively correlated with highest opportunity costs for farmers; and that the additional benefits of the targeting bonus relative to a no-bonus subsidy scheme eventually decline as the share of the bonus is increased.

Currently, the main way that recreational blue space quality is monitored and communicated to potential users is through designated bathing water status, which is evaluated via microbiological standards and epidemiological evidence; however, our experiences of blue spaces extend beyond bathing and microbiology. Interactions across sensory and ecological dynamics are central to recreation in blue spaces where perceived cleanliness, aesthetic appeal, and multisensory richness influence patterns of use, enjoyment and wellbeing outcomes. We propose a need to reconceptualise what we mean by recreational water quality, to better reflect the diversity of ‘qualities’ associated with inland blue space and their influence on health-related outcomes. In this perspective, we outline why a reconceptualisation of recreational water quality classifications is needed, suggest what could be done to work towards a reconceptualised approach of classifying and communicating recreational inland water quality and consider which institutional mechanisms could support such a shift in approach.

Theoretical models of trans-boundary pollutants impose simplifying restrictions on the locational or spatial dimensions of utility, or both. This includes assumptions that citizens in each country care only about domestic environmental damages or that pollution is a pure public bad for which the location of damages is irrelevant to welfare impacts. This article empirically examines the applicability of such assumptions for a case study of marine plastic pollution. The data are from mirror-image, cross-country discrete choice experiments in the United Kingdom and the United States. Results suggest that common simplifying assumptions in the theoretical literature have questionable applicability to transboundary pollutants such as marine plastics.

Livestock brucellosis is an endemic disease in many low-resource settings. Despite its widespread distribution, little is known about the scale of economic impacts caused by the disease. This study aimed to develop an integrated epidemiological-economic modelling framework to estimate production losses attributable to livestock brucellosis, using Tanzania as a case study. Data on livestock production and prevalence of exposure to Brucella spp. were obtained from surveys conducted in northern and central Tanzania between 2013 and 2019. A clustering algorithm was applied to classify households into pastoral and non-pastoral production systems. A Bayesian latent-class analysis model was applied to derive livestock brucellosis prevalence estimates. A herd-growth model was used to estimate production losses attributable to brucellosis. A total of 1,541 households (384 classified as pastoral and 1,157 as non-pastoral) contributed data on livestock production or prevalence of exposure to Brucella spp. The median (95% uncertainty interval, UI) individual-level brucellosis prevalence in cattle, sheep, and goats was 5.1% (3.4-6.9), 1.3% (0.1-3.0), and 2.5% (0.3-4.8) in the pastoral system, and 0.7% (0.1-1.6), 1.6% (0.2-3.8), and 2.5% (0.3-4.9) in the non-pastoral system, respectively. The median (95% UI) annual losses attributable to brucellosis in cattle, sheep, and goats, per infected animal, were 74.4 (26.2-211.7), 9.7 (3.4-23.1) and 10.6 (3.7-25.0) international dollars (int. $) in the pastoral system, and 62.3 (16.8-228.6), 6.3 (1.8-17.1) and 7.0 (2.2-17.9) int. $ in the non-pastoral system, respectively. Household-level losses were equivalent to 4.4% (2.1-8.8) and 0.6% (0.2-1.6) of the median (95% UI) livestock-derived income in the pastoral and non-pastoral systems, respectively. This study did not capture the system-wide impacts of brucellosis, including on human health. The estimated losses are only a part of the full societal economic impact of the disease. These results can be used to inform cost-benefit analyses of potential interventions and guide policy development for brucellosis control.

We outline the key features of markets for biodiversity offsets as a promising economic instrument to incentivise conservation on farmland. Following a review of the main advantages of the approach, we summarise the results of empirical investigations of four key design features of such markets: the metric, the exchange rate, the regulatory target and geographic scope.

We explore whether maternal lead exposure affects birthweights and child mortality in a setting where average blood lead levels were extremely high. We analyse two drinking water interventions in Scotland that reduced lead levels in Glasgow and Edinburgh from 1978 onwards. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design we examine administrative data of over 650,000 births between 1975 and 2000. We do not find consistent evidence of any effect leading to an increase in birthweights or a reduction in under-5 mortality. We estimate minimal detectable effects and can rule out even very low changes in birthweight, but we cannot rule out 1–3 deaths prevented per thousand due to the treatments. As our focus is on short-run outcomes around the time of birth, these findings do not rule out the possibility of longer-term impacts from early-life lead exposure. We also suggest our findings indicate future research should further explore the mediating pathways between lead and health outcomes.

Invasive species pose a challenging management issue, requiring prioritization of which species to target and the intensity of management needed to curb their spread. This paper uses data from a stated choice experiment to elicit the Norwegian population’s willingness-to-pay (WTP) for reducing the spread of the invasive Red King Crab (RKC) from the Barents Sea. This scenario highlights ongoing control and management challenges of this species in Norway. We analyze how WTP for managing the RKC changes when management is embedded within the broader context of managing other invasive species in Norway. Our findings indicate that reminding respondents about the focus on RKC leads to a downward shift in WTP. This shift occurs only for the reduced spread attribute, not for other environmental attributes, suggesting the reminder effectively reduces embedding. Our results are robust across model and utility function specifications. Failure to correct for embedding may result in over-valuation of the embedded good, impacting decisions on conservation or economic exploitation. Implementing an “embedding reminder” may be a cost-effective measure to mitigate embedding in similar studies.

Plastic pollution in the world's oceans threatens ecosystems and biodiversity. The connected nature of the marine environment suggests that coordinated actions by countries sharing an ocean border may provide more effective pollution control than unilateral actions by any one country. However, countries often fail to cooperate, even when joint economic benefits would be higher under cooperation. Here we present a modelling framework to determine the potential economic benefits of cooperative marine plastic pollution management. The framework integrates an estimated plastic transfer matrix from a particle tracking model with game theory to derive the economic benefits of international cooperation for 16 countries bordering the North Atlantic Ocean. Subject to modelling uncertainties, a fully cooperative agreement yields aggregate annual net benefits of around $36 billion and a 64% reduction in emissions. The net benefits of cooperation persist over alternative scenarios and considering the impact of uncertainties but vary in magnitude and distribution.

Economic incentives for habitat creation in productive agricultural land are an important tool for halting biodiversity loss. Given inevitable funding constraints, assessing the cost-effectiveness of potential habitat creation strategies should be a priority. We make model predictions of changes in the populations of ten woodland-affiliated bird species over time across a set of contrasting woodland creation scenarios in a 25 × 25-km square of primarily arable land in England. Using an economic agent-based model of landowners who make economically rational decisions on land use in response to financial incentives for woodland creation, we created a suite of potential landscapes with varying spatial configurations (and amounts) of newly planted woodland. We then parameterised an individual-based model for each of ten woodland bird species, and used these models to simulate dispersal and settlement across the altered landscapes. Across all bird species, population increases were greater when woodland creation plots were clumped together than when randomly sited. When woodland plots were adjacent to existing woodland, increases were comparable to those in the clumped arrangements, except at lower planting densities, where wood-adjacent planting was more beneficial for birds. In all cases, benefits were very gradual, typically taking at least thirty years to be fully realised. Our study demonstrates that the cost-effectiveness of woodland creation, in terms of subsequent benefits to biodiversity, is strongly determined by its spatial configuration. Short-term biodiversity targets for woodland birds are unlikely to be well served by woodland creation, given the time required for newly planted trees to reach maturity. We recommend the use of interim targets, but emphasise that current rates of woodland creation may only result in modest changes in woodland bird populations.

Species distributions are a product of both current spatial configuration of habitats and legacies of historical land use. Here we explore current and historical drivers of species distributions, considering combined effects of spatial spillovers and temporal legacies, both within and between habitat types. We fit Bayesian hierarchical occupancy models to data on 373 species from four taxa (ground beetles, birds, vascular plants and small terrestrial mammals) from a chronosequence of 134 woodlands (10 to >250 years old) in temperate agricultural landscapes in the UK. Both spillovers and legacies affect species richness and community composition and, critically, these effects interact. Real-world combinations of spillovers and legacies result in different biodiversity responses compared with the individual factors in isolation. Woodland patches in landscapes with more old woodland and lower amounts of historical woodland loss tend to host more bird and plant but fewer beetle species. Failing to account for these drivers (in particular, legacy effects) gives a distorted view of habitat suitability. In consequence, the same management actions may result in unexpectedly different outcomes depending on the spatial and historical context within the landscape. A better understanding of spillovers and legacy effects on species distributions is required to design biodiversity-friendly, cost-effective land management.

How best to achieve spatially-coordinated environmental outcomes using reverse auctions has become a research question of growing interest. This paper makes a first attempt to systematically investigate the combined effects of the spatial configuration of landscape and landholder-to-landholder communication on auction performance in delivering landscape-scale environmental improvements. We provide novel insights into the importance of the regulator's knowledge about landscape configuration when implementing auctions for landscape-scale environmental management. Using lab experiments, we vary the spatial correlations of opportunity costs and environmental benefits (positive, negative, no correlation) and the availability of costly communication in stylized agricultural landscapes, where the environmental goal is to establish corridors and stepping stones to facilitate the movement of wildlife species. Results show that bidding behaviour, the degree of spatial coordination and cost-effectiveness are significantly different across these three types of landscape configuration. Auctions perform worst in landscapes where opportunity costs and environmental benefits are negatively correlated. Communication promotes spatially-coordinated conservation effort, but its effects on bidding behaviour depend on landscape configuration. The interplay of a positive spatial correlation with communication was found to best promote spatial coordination, although willingness to incur communication costs by landholders varies with landscape configuration.

A large literature in behavioral science suggests that people's emotional condition can have an impact on their choices. We consider how people's emotions affect their stated preferences and willingness to pay for changes in environmental quality, focusing on the effects of incidental emotions. We use videos to induce emotional states and test the replicability of the results reported in Hanley et al. (2017). Additionally, we employ Face Reader software to verify whether the intended emotional states were successfully induced in our experimental treatments. We find that our treatments succeed in implementing the predicted emotional condition in terms of self-reported emotions but had a variable effect on measured (estimated) emotional states. We replicate the key result from Hanley et al. (2017): induced emotional state has no significant effect on stated preference estimates or on willingness to pay for environmental quality changes. Moreover, we confirm that, irrespective of the treatment assignment or emotional state-be it self-reported or measured-we observe no significant effect of emotion on stated preferences. In our data, stated preference estimates for environmental change are unaffected by changes in incidental emotions, and preference estimates are robust to the emotional state of the responder.

The stated preference (SP) literature contains an expansive body of research on behavioral "anomalies," typically understood as response patterns that are inconsistent with choice theory in neoclassical economics. Although this literature often implies that anomalous behaviors are unique to SPs, widespread behavioral economic evidence of similar patterns across incentivized choice settings raises the potential for an alternative interpretation: SP "anomalies" reflect expected behaviors once systematic deviations from the standard economic model are considered. The parallels between SP anomalies and insights from behavioral economic revealed preference (RP) studies suggest that differences between SPs and RPs should not determine whether SPs are valid for applied welfare analysis. Moreover, these parallels suggest that behavioral economic approaches to calculating welfare implications of nonstandard behaviors may be applicable to SP studies. We review three such approaches (preference purification, reliance on conditions that encourage truthful preference disclosure, and the Bernheim-Rangel framework) and discuss their potential implications for SP research. We also consider more general insights from behavioral welfare economics for SP welfare analysis. We close by identifying promising avenues for interdisciplinary work at the intersection of SP research and behavioral welfare economics, to develop holistic frameworks with guidance for applied welfare economics in the presence of anomalous yet predictable behaviors.