Performing Department
School of Forestry
Non Technical Summary
The United States has a long history of offering incentives to farmers for soil and water conservation, sustaining crop prices, and improving habitat. These incentives have often been in the form of cash payments or cost-share programs for retiring land or adopting conservation management practices. Some of the major programs offered by the USDA include the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP), Wetland reserve Program (WRP), the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) among others. Some of these programs are term agreements where the landowner is required to take the land out of production and convert the area to grasses, trees, or other conservation compatible landcovers for a set length of time. For these types of programs assistance is often given for restoration or conversion to the new landcover and annual rental payments are paid for the opportunity cost of the land. There is increasing interest in using market mechanisms for permanent conservation such as conservation easements. Conservation easements effectively donate or sell a portion of property rights to another group for conservation purposes. Permanent conservation easements (though easements can also be written as `term') leave the land in private control but sell development or other portions of the property rights. A conservation easement transfers a portion of the property rights to another party who is then responsible for monitoring the easement. A permanent easement is transferred with the property title and is intended to permanently restrict changes identified in the easement contract. With reduced budgets and increasing demand for environmental services it is critical to ensure that the conservation programs are efficient. Additionally, it is essential to understand landowner motivations to help predict future supplies of environmental services and to identify best methods for influencing their behavior. As all of these conservation incentive programs are voluntary, it is critical to understand the motivations of landowners to participate. Very little research has been done on landowner conservation motivations related to these programs. This proposed research intends to explore traditional farm practice adoption variables such as market prices, landowner demographics, and farm characteristics, but will also include an analysis of the internal landowner motivations and cultural benefits (spiritual, recreational, aesthetic, educational, sense of place and cultural heritage). Furthermore, this research will explore potential differences in all of these factors across groups by motivational categories, conservation incentive program, types of biophysical conservation efforts (riparian buffer, tree establishment, etc.), and length of contractual obligation (term versus permanent), among others. Each of these factors and comparisons will help to better understand the conservation decision-making of individual landowners enabling better precision in targeting potential participants and for the design of future conservation policies.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The primary objective of this research is to identify landowner external and internal motivations for participation in both term and permanent conservation incentive programs. This project will investigate landowner motivations beyond the traditional demographic, economic, and farm characteristics used in most analyzes of landowner decision-making. It will explore the internal motivations that are more personal to landowners including; specific farm objectives, family commitments, personal identity, aesthetic values, recreational values, spiritual and cultural values, sense of place, and conservation ethics. Additionally, this research will analyze both landowners who decide to rent the environmental services provided on their land through government incentive programs and those who sell their services through conservation easements to state or federal governments or to private or non-profit organizations. Specific goals of the program follow in a sequential order. The first phase of the research will be the identification and description of government and private conservation programs. These will include the multiple government conservation incentive programs in Alabama and the related program characteristics. It will also include identification and description of the multiple conservation easement organizations (land trusts and government sponsored) in Alabama and the general options available for forming an easement offered by each group. The second phase of the research will explore the multiple goals, motivations, environmental attitudes, conservation ethics and cultural benefits that influence different landholders' decisions to participate in the different types of conservation incentive programs. This phase will include qualitative in-depth interviews with landholders participating in these conservation programs and others who have recently terminated involvement. The third phase of the research is designed to identify populations and develop a survey for participants in term conservation incentive programs and both private and government easement programs. The fourth phase of the research will include analysis of the survey. Analysis will include identification of unique groups from correlations among landholder characteristics (demographics, income from farm, total income, etc.), farm characteristics (size, land cover, land use, etc.), environmental attitudes and conservation ethics. Analysis will also be done to identify potential groups of landowners based on motivation types. Finally, the results will be used to compare and contrast participants in different conservation incentive programs, by type of biophysical conservation effort, length of contract, and between in federal and private conservation easement programs. The final phase of the project will include presentation of the analyzes in the form of academic journals and targeted local and international conferences.
Project Methods
There will be several sociological methods used for this project including; document analysis and literature review, interviews with local government agencies and land trusts, exploratory interviews with private landholders who have conservation easements or participate in conservation programs, and a survey of participants in conservation incentive programs. Prior approval for working with human subjects will be sought and approved by Human Assurances Internal Review Board (IRB) and all protocols will be followed. A document analysis and literature review will be conducted to identify and describe the multiple conservation programs and easements offered in Alabama. Additionally, contacts with local government agencies and land trusts will be conducted to help understand any details that we may have missed in the review. Interviews with local government agencies and land trusts will be conducted to identify what they believe the goals, motivations, environmental attitudes, conservation ethics that different landholders have for participation in the different types of programs. These interviews will be open ended and recorded and analyzed using NVIVO qualitative software. Data from interviews with these groups will be used to develop exploratory interviews of landowners who have conservation easements or participate in government conservation programs. These interviews will explore their goals, motivations, environmental attitudes, specific farm objectives, family commitments, personal identity, aesthetic values, recreational values, spiritual and cultural values, sense of place, and conservation ethics that different landholders have for participation in the different types of programs. Additionally, individuals who have let their contracts lapse and those in target areas who have chosen to not be involved will also be interviewed as they may represent a groups with different motivations. These interviews will be open ended and recorded and analyzed using NVIVO qualitative software. The population of participants (and those with recently lapsed contracts) in conservation incentive and easement programs will be obtained from government lists and lists from land trusts. A survey questionnaire will be developed from the qualitative data previously obtained. The Tailored Design Method will be used as a guide for best practices for writing and administering the survey. The survey will be administered to a representative population of the different groups. Data will be entered and analyzed using SPSS software. Factor analysis will be used to identify groups by grouping similar factors from the traditional variables (demographics, land characteristics, economic data) and goals, motivations, environmental attitudes, and conservation ethics. Comparisons will be made across groups. Logistic regression will be run on the factors to identify the accuracy of the overall model.