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.

中文翻译：

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土地所有者参与提供森林生态系统服务的自愿激励计划的元分析

许多提供森林生态系统服务（ES）的自愿性激励计划参与率低，招生面积不足，生态结果效率低下。因此，了解此类项目的参与行为已成为政策成功的关键部分。我们根据对声明（预期）参与的调查或实际参与现有或假设项目的数据，综合了大量关于非工业私人森林所有者行为的文献。使用元回归分析，我们检查了方法、项目特征和经济激励变量如何影响参与率估计。当土地所有者参与是在假设的选择情况下（与实际情况相比）和使用二分法选择调查（与人口普查数据相比）时，参与率往往被高估。边际效应非常大，例如，在假设场景中使用陈述的选择会增加 31%，因此从业者应该意识到它们。然而，当所有其他决定因素都得到控制时，在基于现有计划的修改方案中使用选择实验调查对参与没有影响。随着合同期限的增加以及没有退出选项时，参与率显着下降。这些结果表明，永续合约对参与的负面影响低于期限超过 50 年的限时合约。我们确认，随着补偿金额的增加，参与度增加。对于超过 5 年的合同，一次性预付款在增加初始参与方面比每年付款更有效。我们确定了强有力的决定因素以及这些决定因素对土地所有者参与率估计的影响大小，从而有助于更好地了解森林所有者的行为，并提供有用的见解，使研究人员和资源管理者能够改进新的和现有森林 ES 的设计和效率程式。