Resource information
A significant portion of the world’s
forests that are eligible for Reducing Emission from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation, known as REDD ,
payments are community managed forests. However, there is
little knowledge about preferences of households living in
community managed forests for REDD contracts, or the
opportunity costs of accepting REDD contracts for these
communities. This paper uses a choice experiment survey of
rural communities in Nepal to understand respondents’
preferences toward the institutional structure of REDD
contracts. The sample is split across communities with
community managed forests groups and those without community
managed forest groups to see how prior involvement in
community managed forest groups affects preferences. The
results show that respondents care about how the payments
are divided between households and communities, the severity
of restrictions on firewood use, the restrictions on
grazing, and the fairness of access to community managed
forest resources as well as the level of payments. The
preferences for REDD contracts are in general similar
between community managed and non-community managed forest
resource respondents, but there are differences, in
particular with regard to how beliefs influence the
likelihood of accepting the contracts. Finally, the paper
finds that the opportunity cost of REDD payments, although
cheaper than many other carbon dioxide abatement options, is
higher than previously suggested in the literature.
