Identifying obstacles to the design and implementation of payment schemes for ecosystem services provided through farm trees

An important determinant of ecosystem services provision from European farmland is the amount and spatial arrangement of trees, shrubs, and woodlands that are integrated into the respective land use systems. Farm trees are considered ‘keystone structures’ of agroecosystems because of their disproportionally large ecological value (relative to their low abundance), but are threatened by agricultural intensification, land abandonment, and urbanization. While the preservation of farm trees is a component of several command-and control approaches and while numerous payment schemes for ecosystem services (PES schemes) provided through agricultural practices do in general exist, there are few incentive-based policies that specifically target the conservation of farm trees. This paper uses an institutional economics framework for the analysis of PES schemes that enhance the establishment, protection, and management of farm trees. Using the German state of Saxony as a case, it elaborates on the reasons for the very reluctant participation of farmers in these schemes. The obstacles identified include high production and opportunity costs, contractual uncertainties, and land tenure implications. Further, since scheme adoption has been low compared with the total area covered by the respective farm tree types, the PES schemes alone cannot explain the substantial increase in number and size of some farm-tree types. Options to improve participation comprise regionalised premiums, result-oriented remuneration, and cooperative approaches. The example of PES schemes for farm trees highlights one of the major challenges for the protection and preservation of cultural landscapes: they are man-made and thus need to be preserved, managed, and maintained continuously.Payments for ecosystem services (PES), agroecosystems, trees outside forests, institutional economics, East Germany, Saxony, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Characteristics of resources and the provision of biodiversity and ecosystem services in Germany: the cases of fruit tree meadows and wolf protection

Work on common pool resources has paid scant attention to the role of properties of natural resources for the way their provision is governed. This paper scrutinizes determinants of institutions that regulate the provision of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Two cases of maintaining ecosystem services are compared (protection of wolves and management of scattered fruit tree meadows). Distinct characteristics of resources (mobility) and differences in the overarching European regulatory framework explain their different institutional embeddedness. Cost-effectiveness considerations seem to be paramount in the design of institutions. In the case of wolf protection, the state uses its power to modify property rights in order to increase acceptance of wolf management. This is essential for political reasons as well as to prevent EU sanctions. On the other hand, scattered fruit tree maintenance is subject to voluntary, long-term agreements, justified by medium-term irreversibility and asset specific investments.Institutions, Governance, Wolf Management, Scattered fruit trees, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Developing and Applying IR-Tree Models: Guidelines, Caveats, and an Extension to Multiple Groups

IR-tree models assume that categorical item responses can best be explained by multiple response processes. In the present article, guidelines are provided for the development and interpretation of IR-tree models. In more detail, the relationship between a tree diagram, the model equations, and the analysis on the basis of pseudo-items is described. Moreover, it is shown that IR-tree models do not allow conclusions about the sequential order of the processes, and that mistakes in the model specification can have serious consequences. Furthermore, multiple-group IR-tree models are presented as a novel extension of IR-tree models to data from heterogeneous units. This allows, for example, to investigate differences across countries or organizations with respect to core parameters of the IR-tree model. Finally, an empirical example on organizational commitment and response styles is presented

A Systematic Review of Landscape Corridor Conservation and Management in Europe

Since EU Commission initiated Green Infrastructure (GI) strategy, an important step has been taken to help public to understand benefits of nature, such as providing food, clean air, and water resource. Besides, Green Infrastructure plays an important role in climate regulation, stormwater prevention, sustaining biodiversity. And its recreational function is also valuable for human society. Therefore, it is necessary to invest more resources in Green Infrastructure to develop, maintain and sustain it (Green Infrastructure COM, 2013). Green Infrastructure is planned as a strategically network of natural and seminatural areas with environmental functions and its elements are designed and managed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services it (European Environment Agency, 2011), which also provide solutions for urban and rural landscape conservation and sustainable development under the background of rapid and fundamental transformations in European landscapes. Landscape corridor is identified as thin strips that connect isolated patches (Joshua J. T. et al., 2002). It has similar features such as connectivity, functionality, integration, and can be considered as a part of Green Infrastructure network from systems thinking, ecological thinking and social thinking. Landscape corridor can be defined as the linear landscape elements with cultural properties that represent the combined works of nature and of man. It is important due to its connectivity as well as its scenic, cultural, social, economical, ecological and recreational functions. Comparing with the concept of Green Infrastructure, we can find that Landscape corridor (LC) shares many common features with GI, but it also has its own properties gained from its unique linear form, such as connectivity and/or forming boundaries

The effect of response formats on response style strength: An experimental comparison

Many researchers use self-report data to examine abilities, personality, or attitudes. At the same time, there is a widespread concern that response styles, such as the tendency to give extreme, midscale, or acquiescent responses, may threaten data quality. As an alternative to post hoc control of response styles using psychometric models, a priori control using specific response formats may be a means to reduce biasing response style effects in self-report data in day-to-day research practice. Previous research has suggested that response styles were less influential in a Drag-and-Drop format compared to the traditional Likert-type format. In this article, we further examine the advantage of the Drag-and-Drop format, test its generalizability, and investigate its underlying mechanisms. In two between-subject experiments, we tested different versions of the Drag-and-Drop format against the Likert format. We found no evidence for reduced response style influence in any of the Drag-and-Drop conditions, nor did we find any difference between the conditions in terms of the validity of the measures to external criteria. We conclude that adaptations of response formats, such as the Drag-and-Drop format, may be promising, but require more thorough examination before recommending them as a means to reduce response style influence in psychological measurement

What Difference Does Public Participation Make? An Alternative Futures Assessment Based on the Development Preferences for Cultural Landscape Corridor Planning in the Silk Roads Area, China

Landscape corridor planning (LCP) has become a widespread practice for promoting sustainable regional development. This highly complex planning process covers many policy and planning issues concerning the local landscape, and ideally involves the people who live in the area to be developed. In China, regional planners and administrators encourage the development of landscape corridor planning. However, the current LCP process rarely considers ideas from local residents, and public participation is not recognized as beneficial to planning outcomes. We use a specific Chinese case of LCP to analyze how citizen involvement may enrich sustainable spatial planning in respect to ideas considered and solutions developed. To this end, we compare a recently approved landscape corridor plan that was created without public participation with alternative solutions for the same landscape corridor, developed with the involvement of local residents. These alternatives were then evaluated by professional planners who had been involved in the initial planning process. We demonstrate concrete differences between planning solutions developed with and without public participation. Further, we show that collaborative processes can minimize spatial conflicts. Finally, we demonstrate that public participation does indeed contribute to innovations that could enrich the corridor plan that had been produced exclusively by the decision-makers. The paper closes with a discussion of difficulties that might accompany the involvement of local residents during sustainable LCP in China

Towards a deeper understanding of response styles through psychometrics

It is well known that respondents answer items not only on the basis of the question content, but also on the basis of their preferences for specific response categories. This phenomenon of so-called response styles has gained a lot of attention in both psychometric and applied work, and research has made steady progress in the last decades. However, there are still many open questions, and selected topics were addressed in three research papers that compose the present, cumulative thesis. The first paper (Plieninger, 2016) focused on applied settings, where researchers often fear that response styles may threaten the data quality. However, it was unclear how large such biases can be, and this was investigated in simulation studies. Data contaminated by extreme responding and acquiescence were generated from a recently proposed IRT model under a wide range of conditions. Subsequently, the data were analyzed (e.g., Cronbach’s alpha, correlations) without controlling response styles, and the resulting bias was investigated. The analyses revealed that bias was small to negligible in many situations, but bias became larger the stronger the correlation between the target trait and response styles was. The second paper (Plieninger & Heck, 2017) focused on specific psychometric models for response styles, namely, IR-tree models. We showed that these models can be subsumed under the class of hierarchical MPT models. Within this more general framework, we extended an existing model to acquiescence. Simulation studies showed that the Bayesian estimation procedure successfully recovered the parameter values, and an empirical example from personality psychology was used to illustrate the interpretation of the model. Apart from that, comparisons with existing approaches to acquiescence revealed that different concepts of this response style exists, namely, either in terms of a mixture or a shift process, and the proposed model makes it possible to contrast the two accounts. The third paper (Plieninger, Henninger, & Meiser, 2017) focused on response formats, in particular, the Likert-type format and a recently proposed drag-and-drop format. It was hypothesized that the new format may allow to control response styles as indicated by previous research. We aimed to investigate the underlying mechanisms of this effect as well as possible consequences for reliability and validity. However, a small advantage of the new format over a Likert-type format was only found in one condition where the categories were aligned in two columns. The other conditions, where categories were presented in one column, showed no advantage over the Likert-type format in terms of response styles, reliability, and validity. In summary, the present thesis has led to a deeper understanding of response styles. Open questions that could not be addressed or were brought up are discussed herein, and routes for future research are described