Auctioning Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) Contracts: A Behavioural and Experimental Economic Analysis

• Main Author: Kouakou, Abel-Gautier
• Other Authors: Prof. Dr. Stefanie Engel
• Format: Doctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Payments for Ecosystem Services; PES; Conservation auctions; Behavioural Economics; Social Preferences; Reference-dependent preferences; Experimental Economics; Laboratory experiment; Field experiment; ddc:333.7
• Online Access: https://repositorium.ub.uni-osnabrueck.de/handle/urn:nbn:de:gbv:700-202106085004

The goal of the PhD thesis is to investigate the role of behavioural economics considerations for the performance of conservation auctions. The findings of the three scientific articles suggest that behavioural economics considerations like social (distributional) preferences and reference-dependent preferences may affect the attractiveness and economic performance of conservation auctions, respectively. The results of the first and second articles are based on laboratory experiments conducted with university students, in Germany. The third article implements a field experiment to measure farmers’ preferences over Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) allocation mechanisms and the role of fairness therein, in the context of agrobiodiversity loss in Benin.