Willingness of north Australian pastoralists and graziers to participate in contractual biodiversity conservation

This paper reports results from a choice experiment conducted with pastoralists and graziers across Australia’s tropical savannas in 2013 (n=104). The experiment is designed to inform the question under what conditions are north Australian pastoralists and graziers willing to sign up to voluntary on-farm biodiversity conservation contracts? Results are presented of random parameter logit models of best-worst responses and first preferences, revealing the importance of and trade-offs between contract attributes, and preference heterogeneity. An extended latent class model is also presented to further explore heterogeneity of respondents’ preferences further. Discussion of the results in the context of the international literature is provided and policy implications are proposed.