Finding alternative livelihood possibility for state worker households is crucial for the successful implementation of Natural Forest Protection Program (NFPP) in China's key state forest regions. One local innovation to implement NFPP while allowing worker households alternative use of forestland is the “Contract Management Responsibility System (CMRS)”. Under CMRS, participating households have exclusive rights to harvest and grow non-timber forest products (NTFP) while fulfilling forest protection responsibility.

We examine the role of risk and time preferences in how forest owners respond to forest certification. We test hypotheses from a two-period harvest model derived from prospect theory in the context of Fujian, China, where new forest certification started in 2003. Using survey and field experiment data, we find that certification resulted in reduced harvesting, and the effect was larger for households who are more risk averse and exhibited distorted probability weighting.

Successfully implemented payment for ecosystem services (PES) programs can provide both conservation of nature and financial support to rural communities. In this paper, we explore how PES programs can be designed so as to maximize the amount of additional ecosystem services provided for a given budget. We also provide a brief summary of the use of auction mechanisms in real world PES programs.

During recent decades, water demand estimation has gained considerable attention from scholars.  From an econometric perspective, the most used functional forms include log-log and linear specifications.  Despite the advances in this field and the relevance for policymaking, little attention has been paid to the functional forms used in these estimations, and most authors have not provided justifications for their selection of functional forms.  A discrete continuous choice model of the residential water demand is estimated using six functional forms (log-log, full-log, log q

We analyze if poorest people in rural localities of Región de Los Lagos, Chile have benefited in terms of poverty alleviation with salmon farms establishment within 1992-2002 period.  In order to assess the impact of this event on poverty, we compare areas with and without salmon farms.  We calculate poverty rates through small area estimation models at household level and we approach through differences in differences.  Our findings suggest, that poverty decreased more in localities with salmon farms than in those who do not.  We also identify geographic distances, betw

Colombia has the greatest bird diversity of any country in the world, with approximately 1900 recorded species, equivalent to 20% of all bird species worldwide. Advances made by the Colombian government to achieve greater security within the country – putting an end to the long-standing armed conflict – and to promote ecotourism can help position Colombia as one of the most important bird watching destinations worldwide. This study estimates the economic benefits from bird-based tourism in post-war Colombia.

Most models of social preferences and bounded rationality that are effective in explaining efficiency-increasing departures from equilibrium behavior cannot easily account for similar deviations when they are efficiency-reducing. We show that the notion of sampling equilibrium, subject to a suitable stability refinement, can account for behavior in both efficiency-enhancing and efficiency-reducing conditions.

After more than 50-years of armed conflict, Colombia is now transitioning to a more stable social and political climate due to a series of peace agreements between the government and different armed groups. Consequences of these socio-economic and political changes on ecosystems are largely uncertain, but there is growing concern about derived increases in environmental degradation.