How economic incentives influence people’s engagement with biodiversity and ecosystem conservation at an intrinsic level remains uncertain. Torsten Krause from the University of Lund and Member of the OPERAs project along with Julian Rode and Erik Gómez-Baggethun have set out in their recent paper to further our understanding of the role of Economic incentives in motivating people to engage with conservation. They conducted a review of 18 different studies finding evidence for economic incentives undermining intrinsic motivations whilst also to a lesser extent finding economic incentives reinforced intrinsic motivations to engage with conservation issues.

However the authors note the limited comparability between studies, the lack of baseline information about pre-existing intrinsic motivations, and a complexity stemming from cultural and contextual heterogeneity which together are viewed as the main hurdles that need to be overcome in order to establish more conclusive evidence.

Link to paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914003668