Exploring How Land Tenure Affects Farmers’ Landscape Values: Evidence from a Choice Experiment

Abstract

Values play an important role in farmers’ land management decisions, becoming increasingly relevant when designing environmental policy. One key element that influences farming decisions is the land tenure under which farmers and their land are embedded, which represents different sets of rights for farmers. Therefore, the aim of this study was to elicit farmers’ values regarding the social and ecological attributes of the landscape, and determine how these values vary according to differences in land rights. We performed this exercise in the two most important land tenure systems in rural Mexico. We carried out a choice experiment to understand preferences for different landscape attributes such as vegetation cover, surface water, terrain slope, and type of property. Then, we probed how these preferences change according to the land rights that farmers hold. We found that surface water was consistently the most important landscape attribute. However, there were clear differences that were related to land rights for some values, such as for example, vegetation cover. Institutional mechanisms such as boundary rules and conflicting values are part of the explanation of these differences. These results provide a bridge to understanding farmers’ management decisions, and in the future, improving sustainable development.

Willingness to adopt voluntary and compulsory forest restoration practices by rural landowners in the central Rio Doce basin - MG

“…One of the main factors that can lead restoration strategies to success or failure is the socioeconomic and cultural context in which they are developed (BOELENS et al, 2014;OLIVEIRA et al, 2017). The educational, economic, and social profile of individuals and groups, as well as the culture in which they are inserted, determine highly relevant behavioral aspects that will be fundamental in the pre-disposition of individuals and groups to engage in forest conservation and restoration projects (EZZINE-DE-BLAS et al, 2015;HOWLEY et al, 2015;MONROY-SAIS et al, 2018). Through its behavioral effects, culture exerts great influence on the socio-environmental interaction of individuals, perceptions and judgments about the meaning given to "nature," the "environment," and how this translates into awareness and action regarding the conservation of natural resources (KOSOY et al, 2008).…”