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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Thematic Session: Behavioural and Policy Insights for Conservation Effectiveness
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As biodiversity loss accelerates and climate commitments require scaling conservation interventions, understanding what drives effective conservation outcomes has become increasingly urgent. This session brings together rigorous empirical evidence on public understanding of biodiversity crises, behavioural drivers of nature action and conservation and landscape policy effectiveness.
The four papers span diverse contexts and methods yet share a common goal: bridging the gap between public understanding, intention and action about biodiversity conservation using behavioural and policy effectiveness insights. The first paper examines global public understanding of the risk of a sixth mass extinction (in India, UK, Brazil, South Africa and USA), uncovering an awareness-acceptance paradox with implications for conservation education, communication and behavioural interventions. The second paper experimentally tests behavioural interventions from incentives to boosts for nature conservation, comparing expert predictions against actual effectiveness. The final papers examine long-term impacts of major conservation interventions (REDD+ in Sierra Leone and Protected Areas in Bolivia), revealing that program effectiveness depends critically on-site selection and economic alternatives.
Together, these contributions advance environmental and resource economics by: (1) identifying critical cognitive and perceptual gaps in public understanding that influence political feasibility of transformative action (2) testing behavioural mechanisms that may directly enhance nature conservation engagement (3) providing rare long-run causal evidence on market-based and regulatory conservation instruments. Taken together, the session will explore how psychological, social, economic and environmental factors shape conservation outcomes through varied mechanisms. The session connects micro-level behavioural insights with macro-level policy evaluation, offering complementary perspectives on designing more effective conservation strategies. | ||
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Public understanding of global biodiversity loss and the sixth mass extinction London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom Despite scientific consensus on the severity of human-driven biodiversity loss and extinction risks, public understanding and support for transformative action remains understudied. A pre-registered representative survey (N=2,808, Brazil, India, UK, USA and South Africa) reveals a striking awareness-acceptance paradox: only 23% had heard of "sixth mass extinction," yet 86% agreed it may be happening once explained. Most supported transformative changes (79%), and conservation policies, and behavioural change considered effective. However, participants perceived widespread scientific disagreement (92%). Nearly half believed extinction was reversible (48%). Targeted campaigns addressing misconceptions about scientific consensus and irreversibility are crucial to leverage public action. What motivates nature action? Experimental evidence and expert forecasts 1Free University of Bozen-Bolzano & LSE, Italy; 2Jönköpking International Business School (JIBS) Understanding what motivates individuals to take meaningful actions for nature is critical for designing effective conservation policies. We conduct a large-scale online real-effort experiment in which individuals allocate effort between personal income and nature action. Treatments included a monetary incentive, a behavioral boost, and a social norm nudge, both individually and in combination. We find that monetary incentives and behavioral boosts significantly increase nature action, while the social norm nudge alone has no effect. Combining all three interventions yields the strongest outcomes, with monetary incentives paired with boosts also proving effective. Expert forecasts correctly ranked interventions but systematically overestimated their impacts, especially for the norm treatment. In contrast, forecasts generated by a large language model closely matched observed behavior, suggesting that AI-powered forecasting can complement expert judgment and provide a promising tool for anticipating behavioral responses in environmental economics. Forest conservation policy, additionality, and socio-environmental implications University of Exeter, United Kingdom The world has lost one-third of its forests due to agricultural expansion. Tropical forests provide immense ecological and climate benefits but face the most rapid declines. Bolivia epitomises this crisis, currently experiencing the highest deforestation rates in South America. This study evaluates the impact of Bolivia’s Protected Areas (PAs) established between 1991 and 2023 on a range of economic and environmental outcomes. We employ a novel staggered differences-in-differences (DID) design, matching units based on predicted deforestation risk in the absence of protection using a Random Survival Forest model. This design allows us to explore the determinants of location bias in PA siting, namely, why protection is typically enacted in areas under the lowest threat of conversion. Our staggered DID estimates indicate that, on average, PAs reduce deforestation rates by approximately 0.19 percentage points (pp), a substantial effect given background annual deforestation rates of 0.28pp, and avoiding approximately 1.88 MtCO$_2$ emissions. PAs in the highest risk quintile -- where the potential for additionality is greatest due to intense land conversion pressure -- reduce deforestation rates most substantially, by 0.54pp. Finally, we find no evidence of trade-offs between PA designation and economic outcomes, extinction risk, or carbon storage along the continuum of baseline deforestation risk. Thus, the observed location bias of PAs in Bolivia cannot be attributed to multi-objective planning. These findings underscore the importance of prioritising PAs in high-risk areas to maximise additionality. Evaluating long-run impacts of a voluntary REDD+ project: Evidence from Sierra Leone 1Wageningen University and Research; 2Wageningen University and Research; 3University of Cambridge, United Kingdom; 4Wageningen University and Research We evaluate the decade-long impacts of a large voluntary REDD+ programme in Sierra Leone—the Gola Rainforest National Park project—on deforestation and socio-economic outcomes. The intervention targets forest-edge communities and promotes “conservation via diversion”, raising returns to cocoa through extension, training, and marketing support rather than direct cash transfers. We integrate a non-separable agricultural household model (with imperfect labour and/or capital markets) with a preregistered difference-in-differences design using (i) high-resolution satellite deforestation data for 2001–2023 and (ii) four waves of household panel surveys (2010, 2014, 2019, 2024). Ten years after implementation, the programme slows deforestation by about 0.5 percentage points relative to a control annual deforestation rate near 3 percentage points. We find no statistically significant long-run effects on household well-being or conservation attitudes. Mechanism evidence indicates increased cocoa production and a reallocation of labour away from forest-dependent farming, consistent with labour-market tightening as the main pathway. Effects persist over time. | ||