Paper short abstract:

We use data on a project that aimed at, but failed, to provide local incentives for motivating conservation to examine whether and how exposure to programme activities, at both the community and the individual level, affected future motivations among community members to engage in conservation.

Paper long abstract:

Site-specific Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Land Degradation REDD+) projects were designed to provide local incentives for slowing rates of deforestation. Like other conservation initiatives originating in the economically more developed world they aimed to emphasize community benefits (co-benefits) and elicit community buy-in. These projects, like all projects, have a lifecycle – they are born, they grow and they can die. Furthermore, as a result of different conservation fads, communities in the developing world are often exposed to a series of different interventions. Researchers nevertheless know little about how conservation projects that have expired (or failed to deliver upon their promised goals), affect residents’ willingness to participate in future conservation actions, grassroots or motivated from outside. We use data on a REDD+ project in Zanzibar, Tanzania, that failed to produce carbon payments to examine whether exposure to REDD+, at both the community and the individual level, affected “conservation willingness”. To determine conservation willingness we analyze “Willingness to Accept” bids collected across 48 sites on Pemba Island. Statistical modeling of these data shows that exposure to REDD+ may encourage the emergence of individuals willing to participate in conservation without any compensatory payment. Further we find no evidence that REDD+ has increased the commodification of nature. We also uncover distinct effects of exposure depending on gender, age, time preferences, conservation committee membership, and forest dependence. Less encouragingly we find a significant protest bid and, contingent on increased exposure, potential areas of community polarization over conservation values.