Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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Daily Overview |
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Agriculture, Environment and Development Location: B005 Session Chair: Natalie Struwe, University of Innsbruck | |
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Linking Global North Donors to Local Conservation Outcomes: Reducing Wild Meat Supply through Economic Incentives in West African Informal Restaurants 1: University of Marburg, Chair for Sustainable Use of Natural Resources; 2: University of Innsbruck, Department of Public Finance; 3: Swiss Center of Scientific Research (CSRS), Côte d’Ivoire; 4: The Ostrom Workshop, Indiana University Unprecedented loss of biodiversity and zoonotic disease outbreaks threaten human and planetary well-being. The consumption of wild meat lies as the intersection of these interrelated risks, yet supply-side interventions in informal markets remain understudied. We provide evidence that voluntary payment contracts to wild meat vendors in the spirit of payments for ecosystem services (PES) can reduce wild meat reliance. Our study combines a baseline survey with 427 informal restaurant owners in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire that informed randomized field experiments involving 56 of those restaurants, with an online survey of 2,131 Europeans across 24 countries who may help fund the contracts via donation calls. All participating restaurant owners received financial training and were randomly assigned to a control group (display wild meat information poster) or a treatment group (poster plus monetary compensation for a four-week ban of wild meat sales). In addition to the 4-weeks intervention phase, we collect data for 2 weeks pre- and post-intervention, and extensive baseline and endline questionnaires for a comprehensive evaluation. Treatment restaurants achieved 98% compliance (verified by mystery shoppers) and reduced wild meat sales to 0.3 dishes per day, collectively avoiding 4 tons of wild meat sales over the study period. Notably, the financial performance of restaurants was stable, even without the compensation payments, by substituting wild meat for other dishes. Moreover, we observe no evidence of spillovers onto control restaurants, and 50% of the treatment effect was sustained two weeks after payments ended. The European donors show substantial willingness to financially support restaurant owners for avoiding wild meat, with 71% of participants sacrificing on average 50% of their resources in donations. Together, these results show that voluntary PES-style incentives may offer a scalable and financially sustainable mechanism to reduce pressure on wildlife and lower zoonotic disease risks from informal urban markets, ultimately improving upon planetary health. | |