Making Bird Numbers Count : Should Dutch Meadow Bird Conservation Schemes Become Result-Based?

Current management contracts under agri-environmental schemes (AES) are often action-based. This means that farmers are reimbursed for the costs incurred when implementing conservation measures but are not paid on the basis of actual improvements in environmental outcomes. In theory, result-based schemes with payments for outcomes could improve cost and ecological effectiveness of AES. However, result-based schemes are rarely applied in practice, partly because of the difficulty to design feasible schemes. This article describes a hypothetical meadow bird protection scheme that considers payments for results. The scheme was developed together with Dutch farmers and resulted in a hybrid scheme, including both result-based and action-based elements. Such a scheme was preferred to a purely result-based scheme because the success of bird conservation cannot be attributed to one farmer alone. In addition, the article presents the results of a discrete choice experiment (DCE) based on the hypothetical scheme. The DCE shows that the predicted probability of choosing one of the hypothetical hybrid schemes was high (75%). We conclude that hybrid schemes that include bonus payments for success, fixed payments for measures, and flexibility in choosing measures can help to achieve sufficient participation rates and provide incentives for achieving the desired results