Although protected areas (PAs) have long been considered a successful conservation strategy, more recent research has highlighted their ecological and sociological limitations. The extant PA network is constrained by land availability and exacerbates cultural, political, and social conflicts over access to resources. Consequently, the importance of private lands in playing a complementary role in conservation is being widely recognized. Voluntary conservation programs that encourage private landowners to adopt biodiversity-friendly agricultural practices have emerged worldwide. Landowners' willingness to participate in these programs is critical to attaining landscape-level biodiversity conservation. We adopted a multidisciplinary approach, combining economic theory of rational choice and social choice theory to explain decision making. Using a stated preference choice experiment method, we examined the role of program design and influence of demographic, economic, and socio-psychological variables on landowners' willingness to enroll in voluntary, incentive-based agroforestry programs. In 2018–2019, we surveyed 602 landowners in the buffer area of Pench Tiger Reserve, India. Landowners' willingness to engage in agroforestry depended on the amount of land to be enrolled, program duration, and incentive amount. Landowners' socio-economic characteristics, attitudes, self-efficacy, and social norms also influenced their willingness to participate. On average, landowners required Rs. 66,000 (ca. $940 USD) per acre per year to modify their land use and adopt agroforestry. Our study demonstrates that integrating voluntary agroforestry programs into India's rural development policy may allow biodiversity conservation to be balanced with agricultural productivity in buffer areas surrounding PAs. We call for a new approach that recognizes farmers as stakeholders in conservation and in creating resilient landscapes that support biodiversity and preserve livelihoods.

中文翻译：

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深思熟虑——调查农民在印度中部保护区周围参与保护管理的意愿

尽管保护区 (PA) 长期以来一直被认为是一种成功的保护策略，但最近的研究强调了它们的生态和社会学局限性。现存的保护区网络受到土地可用性的限制，并加剧了在获取资源方面的文化、政治和社会冲突。因此，私人土地在保护中发挥互补作用的重要性得到广泛认可。鼓励私人土地所有者采用有利于生物多样性的农业做法的自愿保护计划已经在世界范围内出现。土地所有者参与这些计划的意愿对于实现景观层面的生物多样性保护至关重要。我们采用多学科的方法，结合理性选择的经济理论和社会选择理论来解释决策。我们使用规定的偏好选择实验方法，研究了计划设计的作用以及人口、经济和社会心理变量对土地所有者自愿参加基于激励的农林业计划的意愿的影响。2018-2019 年，我们调查了印度彭奇老虎保护区缓冲区的 602 名土地所有者。土地所有者从事农林业的意愿取决于要登记的土地数量、计划持续时间和奖励金额。土地所有者的社会经济特征、态度、自我效能和社会规范也影响了他们的参与意愿。平均而言，土地所有者需要卢比。每年每英亩 66,000（约 940 美元）用于改变他们的土地利用并采用农林业。我们的研究表明，将自愿农林业项目纳入印度 农村发展政策可以使保护区周围缓冲区的生物多样性保护与农业生产力保持平衡。我们呼吁采取一种新方法，将农民视为保护和创造支持生物多样性和保护生计的弹性景观的利益相关者。