UC Merced

This paper examines landowner and societal motivations behind land conservation, and specifically conservation easement policy. Andreoni (1988) and others have shown that people receive a “warm glow” when they contribute to public goods. This raises the question of how much society should pay for conservation when private landowners have a warm glow from their donation. Previous authors have connected the concept of “nonpecuniary returns” to land protection (Duke, 2004; Mar- shall, 2002), but there is a need to connect this information to economic efficiency. We believe that implementation problems with conservation easement appraisals, transfer payments, and land trust incentives indicate a need for formalized considera- tion of landowner motivations related to the warm glow they receive from private amenity rents. As this study and previous studies have shown, land trusts and conservation organization assume and expect a level of landowner commitment to conservation. However, price discovery for non-market amenities is very difficult and pric- ing mechanisms are complex. We adapt the classic externality model to explore a policy that requires landowners to also financially contribute towards the protection of their lands. This is done by disaggregating the marginal private benefit curve to better specify where market inefficiencies might take place.