Dataset Information

What Determines Forest Farmers' Participation in Afforestation Programs? Empirical Evidence from a Population-Based Census Survey.

ABSTRACT: Afforestation programs have become increasingly significant as policymakers attempt to protect the environment and reduce climate change. Although many studies have examined the participation decisions of forest farm households in afforestation programs, these studies fail to consider different types of these policies. This paper fills this knowledge gap by studying the determinants of forest farms participating in two afforestation programs on plain and sloped land in Taiwan. We construct a population-based sample of forest farms drawn from agricultural census surveys in Taiwan and estimate the multinomial logit model. We find that failing to distinguish between afforestation programs may result in misleading findings. Moreover, socio-demographic and farm production characteristics also affect participation decisions. Additional results from a simple simulation exercise show that forest farms are more likely to enroll in afforestation programs on sloped land, possibly due to lower opportunity costs.

SUBMITTER: Lee TH

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7312513 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

What Determines Forest Farmers' Participation in Afforestation Programs? Empirical Evidence from a Population-Based Census Survey.

Lee Tzong-Haw TH Lee Brian B Chen Yu-Long YL Sun Lih-Chyun LC Chang Hung-Hao HH

International journal of environmental research and public health 20200603 11

Afforestation programs have become increasingly significant as policymakers attempt to protect the environment and reduce climate change. Although many studies have examined the participation decisions of forest farm households in afforestation programs, these studies fail to consider different types of these policies. This paper fills this knowledge gap by studying the determinants of forest farms participating in two afforestation programs on plain and sloped land in Taiwan. We construct a pop ...[more]

PMID: 32503250

Similar Datasets

Project description:Since China's reform and opening-up in 1978, the income of rural residents has increased when compared with that of urban residents. However, the income growth rate of farmers is relatively low, and the income gap between urban and rural areas is widening. Using a sample of 1,325 large-scale farming households in Lin'an, this study constructs a theoretical path for how the level of vertical integration and an organization model affect farmers' income levels and empirically tests the path using a mediation effect analysis model. The results indicate that organization models and vertical integration are important factors that affect farmers' income levels. The total income and agricultural operation income of farmers who participate in agricultural operation organizations are greater than that of farmers who do not participate in an operation organization. In addition, the total income and agricultural operation income of farmers who produce and process and those who produce, process, and sell are higher than those of farmers who only produce. A farmers' organization model has both a direct and an indirect positive influence on their income level, with the indirect positive influence coming through the mediating variable of vertical integration. The application of the organizational model can promote the growth of rural households' total family income and agricultural income by 13.48% and 14.48% respectively, consisting of direct increases of 9.67% and 10.19%, and indirect increases of 3.81% and 4.29% through vertical integration. The results also show that access to credit, agricultural technology training, and the farmer's education level have significant positive impacts on farming income levels. The findings suggest ways to increase farmers' income by perfecting agricultural management organization systems, promoting agricultural industrialization, strengthening rural financial support, improving agricultural technical training for farmers, and increasing their level of education.

Project description:BACKGROUND:Although there is broad agreement that negative carbon emissions may be required in order to meet the global climate change targets specified in the Paris Agreement and that carbon sequestration in the terrestrial biosphere can be an important contributor, there are important accounting issues that often discourage forest carbon sequestration projects. The legislation establishing the California forest offset program, for example, requires that offsets be "real, additional, quantifiable, permanent, verifiable, and enforceable". While these are all clearly desirable attributes, their implementation has been a great challenge in balancing complexity, expense, and risk. Most forest offset protocols carry similar accounting objectives, but often with different details, (e.g. Richards and Huebner in Carbon Manag 3(4):393-410, 2012 and Galik et al. in Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change 14:677-690, 2009). The result is that the complexity, expense, and risk of participation discourage participation and make it more difficult to achieve climate mitigation goals. We focus on the requirements for accounting and permanence to illustrate that current requirements disproportionately disadvantage small landowners. RESULTS:The simplified 1040EZ filing system for U.S. income taxes may provide insight for a protocol model that balances reward, effort, and risk, while still achieving the overall objectives of standardized offset protocols. In this paper, we present initial ideas and lay the groundwork behind a "2050EZ" protocol for forest carbon sequestration as a complement to existing protocols. CONCLUSION:The Paris Agreement states that "Parties should take action to conserve and enhance, as appropriate, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases." The Paris Agreement also refers to issues such as equity, sustainable development, and other non-carbon benefits. The challenge is to provide incentives for maintaining and increasing the amount of carbon sequestered in the biosphere. Monitoring and verification of carbon storage need to be sufficient to demonstrate sequestration from the atmosphere while providing clear incentives and simple accounting approaches that encourage participation by diverse participants, including small land holders.

Project description:Many voluntary incentive programs for provision of forest ecosystem services (ES) have low participation rates, insufficient enrollment areas, and inefficient ecological outcomes. Understanding participation behavior in such programs has therefore become a crucial part of policy success. We synthesized a large body of literature on the behavior of nonindustrial private forest owners based on surveys of stated (intended) participation or data on actual participation in existing or hypothetical programs. Using metaregression analysis, we examined how methodological, program-characteristic, and economic-incentive variables affected participation rate estimates. Participation rates tended to be overestimated when landowner participation was elicited in hypothetical choice situations (compared with real situations) and when dichotomous choice surveys (compared with census data) were used. The marginal effect sizes were quite large, for example, a 31% increase with use of stated choices in hypothetical scenarios, and practitioners should therefore be aware of them. However, use of choice experiment surveys in a modified scenario based on existing programs had no effect on participation when all other determinants were controlled for. Participation rates decreased significantly as length of the contract increased and when there was no withdrawal option. These results suggest that perpetual contracts have a lower negative impact on participation than time-limited contracts with a duration of over 50 years. We confirmed that as compensation amounts increased, participation increased. One-time up-front payments were more effective in increasing initial participation than annual payments for contracts of over 5 years. We identified the robust determinants and the effect sizes of those determinants on landowner participation rate estimates, thereby contributing to a better understanding of forest owner behavior and offering useful insights to enable researchers and resource managers to improve the design and efficiency of new and existing forest ES programs.

Dataset Information

What Determines Forest Farmers' Participation in Afforestation Programs? Empirical Evidence from a Population-Based Census Survey.

Publications

What Determines Forest Farmers' Participation in Afforestation Programs? Empirical Evidence from a Population-Based Census Survey.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets