Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors in their article use qualitative analysis to explore the motivations of landowners in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil to participate or not in a PES project, their compliance with environmental regulations, and the effect of environmental regulations and PES on land management decision-making.  The paper is very well structured and written.  The analysis is sound and the results are useful both to the academia and the forest policy analysts and decision-makers.  I recommend publication of the article in Sustainability pending the following few minor corrections.

Figure 2a & 2b.  Parts of the graphs are missing.

Reference 29.  It is not possible to access

Reference 35.  A more recent access date should be cited.

Author Response

Thank you very much for reviewing our manuscript. 

We have fixed the figure and fixed references issues.  

Reviewer 2 Report

Main text needs moderate change of English, since there still are a few mistakes left.

Introduction.

I would reshape it saying that natural conservation can be promoted both by compulsory (laws) and voluntary-mixed* tools (e.g. PES). The use of PES for increasing environmental law compliance is not a general approach, but it is usually adopted in situations - mostly related to poor countries - where the cost to comply with laws is not sustainable at least for some groups of citizens/producers. Usually, in developed countries, additional payments are provided only in the case of obligations/results that are higher than the standards required by command and control tools. in both cases (rich and poor areas) it is possible that a mix of policy tools contributes to overcome the drawbacks of single tools. It is assumed that individuals make decisions about laws compliance and PES** based on .....

I would distinguish between the aim of the paper (understanding motivation to partecipate, etc.) and the fact that you used a specific case-study area for your analysis. In this way, while literature review may have a general span (at least for a broad group of countries, if not at global level), results are related to the case-study area; the chance of application to a broader context than the case-study area should be discussed and motivated.

*according to different authors, PES are classified either as voluntary or mixed policy tools

** in the case of compulsory laws there is only the decision problem about complying, or not, with them. In the case of PES there is the decision about entering, or not, the scheme and in the case of decision to enter the scheme, the decision to comply, or not (moral hazard) with the scheme.

Main text

1. Introduction

Besides the categories of "incentives" and "disincentives" I would recommend the related categories of compulsory, voluntary and mixed policy tools.

Extensive literature is provided about the specific situation of Latin America. I would recommend including some more references about PES in general (cost-effectiveness, design, moral hazard). In the case of statements that may be "context dependent" (e.g. the use of PES to improve compliance to law requirements), please highlight it.

It would be possible to add the total number of landowners of the case-study area and the share of landowners (both entering and not entering PAF on the total)? How much the case-study area is representative of Brazil situation?

Has the history of PAF (partnership between an international NGO and four Brazilian organizations) influenced in some way its success?

Although they are mainly dealing with the European context, you may profit for the reading of the following papers:

Van Zanten, B. T., Verburg, P. H., Espinosa, M., Gomez-y-Paloma, S., Galimberti, G., Kantelhardt, J., ... & Raggi, M. (2014). European agricultural landscapes, common agricultural policy and ecosystem services: a review. Agronomy for sustainable development, 34(2), 309-325. (in particular fig 4).

Mills, J., Gaskell, P., Ingram, J., Dwyer, J., Reed, M., & Short, C. (2017). Engaging farmers in environmental management through a better understanding of behaviour. Agriculture and Human Values, 34(2), 283-299 and following literature.

Steg, L., & Vlek, C. (2009). Encouraging pro-environmental behaviour: An integrative review and research agenda. Journal of environmental psychology, 29(3), 309-317.

2. Methodology

Please define the concepts of Behavior decision and Behavior change, linking them to the literature review given in the introduction

As regards figure 1:

Please check relation (arrowhead) between Behavior decision and Behavior change. If Behavior decision requires or does not require Behavioral change, behavior decision is an effect and not a cause of behavior change. If so, I would flip the direction of the arrowhead.

PES increase the utility of acting inside the rules. Rule enforcement, through sanctions and control/monitoring (influencing the likelihood of detection), decrease the utility of acting against the rules. I would avoid putting also "increase" insofar as rule enforcement should not increase the utility of acting against the rules

Please consider, for improving coherence, to change figure caption in "Rule enforcement and PES joint ...."

Text below table 2 gives as an aim of the interview to understand why "they comply or did not comply with the FC" while Interview questions include "Why people comply (or not) with the legislation". In my opinion, it is not the same to speak in general or to admit its own failure to comply with law requirements (at least in terms of an attitude regarding law enforcement).

3. Results

As regards figure 2:

i) some parts are cutted and it is not possible to see the right end side of pictures 2-a) and 2-b)

ii) picture a) and c) about insiders differ only for impact on production, while b) and d) for outsiders differ only for behavior change. I would merge each couple of pictures highlighting with a "IF" what is the main condition influencing the willingness to enter PAF program for insiders and outsiders. In this way there will be only one model for insiders and another for outsiders. See included draft pictures for the part to be modified in order to merge the two insider models.

iii) if leaving the current format (from 2a) to 2e) of figure 2, in the caption the reference to the "overall" model is wrong (that is letter e) and not a))

3.1. Economic reason were not uninfluencial insofar as they prevented the joining of not partecipants. From this point of view, it would have been interesting to ask non participants about the minimum level of economic incentives that would make them change their attitude towards PAF. If PES were targeted to small land owners relying on clear land for their livelihood, it is possible that, PES equity, efficiency and effectiveness would have been higher. Indeed, it seems that the money went to people who would have joined anyway while people concerned about their livelihood and their children's future did not have enough economic incentive to join.

Maybe, before discussing of motivation for PAF participation (and FC compliance) it would have been good to shortly describe drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, e.g. based on the results of REDD+ about drivers of D&D in developing countries

As regards figure 3.

"The revised model (Figure 3) merges the explanatory models of decision-making (Figure 2). It highlights (1) important distinctions between outsider and insider groups; (2) the impacts of corruption and lack of trust in government on decision-making processes; and (3) pathways that reflect added constructs in decision-making among insiders and outsiders and between PAF participants and non-participants." The above comment seems to me more related to Figure 2.e than to Figure 3.

Please provide in the text motivations about the modifications from figure 1 to figure 3.

Figure 3. Check arrowheads between Behavior decision and Behavior change, please explain: a) why a Behavior decision which does not require a Behaviour change results in Environmental additionality and b) the contribute of PES (improved information?) to environmental additionality. If, as written in page 9, participation to the project increased motivation to conserve (see 3.2 - first paragraph), but PES did not influence the decision, I would suggest changing the box "does not require behavior change" to just "behavior change" and use arrowheads to highlight that PES determined "behavior change" while "behavior change" is required for behavior decision or may be influenced by it. In this case PES could have a future indirect effect on forest conservation, if not an immediate one.

3.2 Please explain why fiscal incentives (modest or not) should reduce other motivations for FC compliance. I would have thought that fiscal incentives should reinforce (and not reduce) other motivations to comply.

Please change the reference to Soares, 2017 (page 10) in the proper format

4. Discussion

4.3 Please change reference to "Daniels et al (2010)" in the correct format.

Please check if landowners with off-farm incomes are the ones burning or cutting forest (income from clear land should be more important for farmers without off-farm income).

Since you used the concepts of behavior decision and behavior change as key elements for your model/analysis, you should refer more to them when discussing results.

5. Conclusions

It is not only the types of tools to be combined to be relevant, but also the design of tools and the way they are implemented that is important. PES or Rule enforcement efficiency or effectiveness depend on the context and the way they are designed and enforced.

It would be good to introduce a reference to collective measures / situations to collectively owned land, which seems to represent a useful tool for overcoming some of the problems related to inequality and high cost in participation to PES / rule enforcement.

Please check if the following references would contribute to improve your analysis

Trædal, L. T., & Vedeld, P. O. (2017). Livelihoods and land uses in environmental policy approaches: The case of PES and REDD+ in the Lam dong province of Vietnam. Forests, 8(2), 39.

Gebara, M. F., & Agrawal, A. (2017). Beyond rewards and punishments in the Brazilian Amazon: Practical implications of the REDD+ discourse. Forests, 8(3), 66.

Godar, J., Gardner, T. A., Tizado, E. J., & Pacheco, P. (2014). Actor-specific contributions to the deforestation slowdown in the Brazilian Amazon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(43), 15591-15596.

Azevedo, A. A., Rajão, R., Costa, M. A., Stabile, M. C., Macedo, M. N., dos Reis, T. N., ... & Pacheco, R. (2017). Limits of Brazil’s Forest Code as a means to end illegal deforestation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(29), 7653-7658.

Zanella, M. A., Schleyer, C., & Speelman, S. (2014). Why do farmers join Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes? An Assessment of PES water scheme participation in Brazil. Ecological Economics, 105, 166-176.

ANNEX

Annex should be extensively edited about language.

Figure 1 is not clear enough

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to review our paper. By addressing your comments, we believe we have improved the manuscript. Below we have listed each of your original comments followed by our response.                                      

Comment 1:

Main text needs moderate change of English, since there still are a few mistakes left.

Response

We revised the text again. Hopefully this time we did not miss any mistake.

Comment 2:

Introduction.

I would reshape it saying that natural conservation can be promoted both by compulsory (laws) and voluntary-mixed* tools (e.g. PES). The use of PES for increasing environmental law compliance is not a general approach, but it is usually adopted in situations - mostly related to poor countries - where the cost to comply with laws is not sustainable at least for some groups of citizens/producers. Usually, in developed countries, additional payments are provided only in the case of obligations/results that are higher than the standards required by command and control tools. in both cases (rich and poor areas) it is possible that a mix of policy tools contributes to overcome the drawbacks of single tools. It is assumed that individuals make decisions about laws compliance and PES** based on .....

I would distinguish between the aim of the paper (understanding motivation to partecipate, etc.) and the fact that you used a specific case-study area for your analysis. In this way, while literature review may have a general span (at least for a broad group of countries, if not at global level), results are related to the case-study area; the chance of application to a broader context than the case-study area should be discussed and motivated.

*according to different authors, PES are classified either as voluntary or mixed policy tools

** in the case of compulsory laws there is only the decision problem about complying, or not, with them. In the case of PES there is the decision about entering, or not, the scheme and in the case of decision to enter the scheme, the decision to comply, or not (moral hazard) with the scheme.

1. Introduction

Besides the categories of "incentives" and "disincentives" I would recommend the related categories of compulsory, voluntary and mixed policy tools.

Extensive literature is provided about the specific situation of Latin America. I would recommend including some more references about PES in general (cost-effectiveness, design, moral hazard). In the case of statements that may be "context dependent" (e.g. the use of PES to improve compliance to law requirements), please highlight it.

Response

We have included the compulsory and voluntary-mixed terminology. Please see first paragraph of introduction. We opted not categorize countries as poor/developed but we removed the adverb that indicated that PES for increasing environmental law compliance is a general approach. We also distinguished the aim of the paper and the fact that we used a specific case-study area for analysis.

Comment 3:

1. Introduction

It would be possible to add the total number of landowners of the case-study area and the share of landowners (both entering and not entering PAF on the total)? How much the case-study area is representative of Brazil situation?

Response

According to IBGE(2017), the total number of landowners in Rio Claro was 499 , therefore PAF included about 14% of landowners in the municipality. We included this info in the study area section.

(IBGE, Censo Agropecuário 2017. Available at: https://cidades.ibge.gov.br/brasil/rj/rio-claro/pesquisa/24/76693)

Brazil is very diverse, so it is hard to say how much the case study area is representative of Brazil situation.

Comment 4:

Has the history of PAF (partnership between an international NGO and four Brazilian organizations) influenced in some way its success?

Response

Yes, for more on this please see Fiorini et al. 2020 ( Forest cover effects of payments for ecosystem services: Evidence from an impact evaluation in Brazil; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800919305373 ).

Comment 5:

Although they are mainly dealing with the European context, you may profit for the reading of the following papers:

Van Zanten, B. T., Verburg, P. H., Espinosa, M., Gomez-y-Paloma, S., Galimberti, G., Kantelhardt, J., ... & Raggi, M. (2014). European agricultural landscapes, common agricultural policy and ecosystem services: a review. Agronomy for sustainable development, 34(2), 309-325. (in particular fig 4).

Mills, J., Gaskell, P., Ingram, J., Dwyer, J., Reed, M., & Short, C. (2017). Engaging farmers in environmental management through a better understanding of behaviour. Agriculture and Human Values, 34(2), 283-299 and following literature.

Steg, L., & Vlek, C. (2009). Encouraging pro-environmental behaviour: An integrative review and research agenda. Journal of environmental psychology, 29(3), 309-317.

Response:

Thank you for the literature suggestions, we have included the papers in the references.

Comment 6:

2. Methodology

Please define the concepts of Behavior decision and Behavior change, linking them to the literature review given in the introduction

Response

We have included those concepts in the methodology (first paragraph). “We define behavior decisions as the environmental management practices reflecting on land-use; and behavior change as the changes in behavior related to the existence of a regulation or a PES that result on land-cover change.”

Comment 7:

As regards figure 1:

Please check relation (arrowhead) between Behavior decision and Behavior change. If Behavior decision requires or does not require Behavioral change, behavior decision is an effect and not a cause of behavior change. If so, I would flip the direction of the arrowhead.

PES increase the utility of acting inside the rules. Rule enforcement, through sanctions and control/monitoring (influencing the likelihood of detection), decrease the utility of acting against the rules. I would avoid putting also "increase" insofar as rule enforcement should not increase the utility of acting against the rules

Please consider, for improving coherence, to change figure caption in "Rule enforcement and PES joint ...."

Response

Thank you for catching those. We have modified figure one to address your comments.

Comment 7:

Text below table 2 gives as an aim of the interview to understand why "they comply or did not comply with the FC" while Interview questions include "Why people comply (or not) with the legislation". In my opinion, it is not the same to speak in general or to admit its own failure to comply with law requirements (at least in terms of an attitude regarding law enforcement).

Response

We modified the text to address comment 7. “ We conducted semi-structured interviews (34-150 minutes) to explore why participants chose to join or not join PAF and why people complied or not c with the FC."

Comment 8:

3. Results

As regards figure 2:

1. i) some parts are cutted and it is not possible to see the right end side of pictures 2-a) and 2-b)
2. ii) picture a) and c) about insiders differ only for impact on production, while b) and d) for outsiders differ only for behavior change. I would merge each couple of pictures highlighting with a "IF" what is the main condition influencing the willingness to enter PAF program for insiders and outsiders. In this way there will be only one model for insiders and another for outsiders. See included draft pictures for the part to be modified in order to merge the two insider models.

iii) if leaving the current format (from 2a) to 2e) of figure 2, in the caption the reference to the "overall" model is wrong (that is letter e) and not a))

Response

Thank you for your “if statement” suggestion. We changed figure 2 to incorporate it. 

Comment 9:

3.1. Economic reason were not uninfluencial insofar as they prevented the joining of not partecipants. From this point of view, it would have been interesting to ask non participants about the minimum level of economic incentives that would make them change their attitude towards PAF. If PES were targeted to small land owners relying on clear land for their livelihood, it is possible that, PES equity, efficiency and effectiveness would have been higher. Indeed, it seems that the money went to people who would have joined anyway while people concerned about their livelihood and their children's future did not have enough economic incentive to join.

Response

We did have follow up questions asking the non-participants about how much would it take to them to join the program. But we did not quantify those as it was out of the scope of the study.

Comment 10:

Maybe, before discussing of motivation for PAF participation (and FC compliance) it would have been good to shortly describe drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, e.g. based on the results of REDD+ about drivers of D&D in developing countries.

Response

In the study area section, we included a sentence describing local deforestation drivers.

Comment 11:

As regards figure 3.

"The revised model (Figure 3) merges the explanatory models of decision-making (Figure 2). It highlights (1) important distinctions between outsider and insider groups; (2) the impacts of corruption and lack of trust in government on decision-making processes; and (3) pathways that reflect added constructs in decision-making among insiders and outsiders and between PAF participants and non-participants." The above comment seems to me more related to Figure 2.e than to Figure 3.

Please provide in the text motivations about the modifications from figure 1 to figure 3.

Response

We included a paragraph in the end of the results section explaining the reasoning for modifying figure 1.

Comment 12:

Figure 3. Check arrowheads between Behavior decision and Behavior change, please explain: a) why a Behavior decision which does not require a Behaviour change results in Environmental additionality and b) the contribute of PES (improved information?) to environmental additionality. If, as written in page 9, participation to the project increased motivation to conserve (see 3.2 - first paragraph), but PES did not influence the decision, I would suggest changing the box "does not require behavior change" to just "behavior change" and use arrowheads to highlight that PES determined "behavior change" while "behavior change" is required for behavior decision or may be influenced by it. In this case PES could have a future indirect effect on forest conservation, if not an immediate one.

Response

We modified figure 3 after reading your comments. a) Behavior decision which does not require a Behavior change results in Environmental additionality because the project was the responsible to perform reforestation activities. Landowner did not have to change any behavior because most areas set aside for the project were not used for production b) to read more about PAF’s additionality please check Fiorini et al. 2020. We have included the reference in the text.

Comment 12:

3.2 Please explain why fiscal incentives (modest or not) should reduce other motivations for FC compliance. I would have thought that fiscal incentives should reinforce (and not reduce) other motivations to comply.

Response

There is some literature on motivation crowding by economic incentives ( for a review see Rode, 2015 - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800914003668?via%3Dihub 0. You mentioned the “crowding in/out” debate. The crowding out logic is that monetary incentives can undermine intrinsic motivations. People may adopt the ‘entitlement to payment’ reasoning. Unfortunately, this discourse is currently been used by the Brazilian environmental minister.

Comment 12:

Please change the reference to Soares, 2017 (page 10) in the proper format.

4.3 Please change reference to "Daniels et al (2010)" in the correct format.

Response

We changed those references to the proper format.

Comment 13:

4. Discussion

Please check if landowners with off-farm incomes are the ones burning or cutting forest (income from clear land should be more important for farmers without off-farm income).

Since you used the concepts of behavior decision and behavior change as key elements for your model/analysis, you should refer more to them when discussing results.

Response

As it was not within our scope to check if landowners with off-farm incomes are the ones burning or cutting forest, we modified text for coherence.

Comment 14:  

5. Conclusions

It is not only the types of tools to be combined to be relevant, but also the design of tools and the way they are implemented that is important. PES or Rule enforcement efficiency or effectiveness depend on the context and the way they are designed and enforced.

It would be good to introduce a reference to collective measures / situations to collectively owned land, which seems to represent a useful tool for overcoming some of the problems related to inequality and high cost in participation to PES / rule enforcement.

Please check if the following references would contribute to improve your analysis

Trædal, L. T., & Vedeld, P. O. (2017). Livelihoods and land uses in environmental policy approaches: The case of PES and REDD+ in the Lam dong province of Vietnam. Forests, 8(2), 39.

Gebara, M. F., & Agrawal, A. (2017). Beyond rewards and punishments in the Brazilian Amazon: Practical implications of the REDD+ discourse. Forests, 8(3), 66.

Godar, J., Gardner, T. A., Tizado, E. J., & Pacheco, P. (2014). Actor-specific contributions to the deforestation slowdown in the Brazilian Amazon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(43), 15591-15596.

Azevedo, A. A., Rajão, R., Costa, M. A., Stabile, M. C., Macedo, M. N., dos Reis, T. N., ... & Pacheco, R. (2017). Limits of Brazil’s Forest Code as a means to end illegal deforestation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(29), 7653-7658.

Zanella, M. A., Schleyer, C., & Speelman, S. (2014). Why do farmers join Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes? An Assessment of PES water scheme participation in Brazil. Ecological Economics, 105, 166-176.

Response

We are grateful for the additional suggested citations and have revised our discussion section to include as many of them as possible

Comment 15:

ANNEX

Annex should be extensively edited about language.

Figure 1 is not clear enough

Response

We revised the annex.