How can the choice architecture toolkit be utilized to improve policy design for private land conservation? We investigate several combinations of tools that encourage landowners to take spatially coordinated conservation actions in payment for ecosystem services (PES) schemes to study effective interventions. In particular, we ask whether setting a minimum participation requirement (MPR) at the local community level in combination with nudging about pre-existing participation improves a spatially coordinated conservation effort compared to a conventional design. Under the proposed choice architecture, we find that even a modest increase in participation can significantly impact ecosystem fragmentation. A discrete choice model accounting for social interactions reveals that the combined intervention boosts the conformity of individual behavior to that of local peers. Local clustering of participation, enhanced through increased unity, facilitates substantial improvements in spatially coordinated conservation efforts. Overall, our analysis suggests that introducing an MPR to the smallest administrative unit, together with nudging about pre-existing participants, can substantially improve the cost-effectiveness of PES schemes.

Are workers’ preferences the same in private and public sectors? To prevent fraud by civil servants, are the methods commonly used in the private sector effective in the public sector? To answer these questions, we conducted an online experiment to investigate the differences between private and public workers’ dishonest behaviors. The results of the experiment indicated that public servants were more honest than private workers. The correlations between dishonesty and demographic variables differed between private workers and public servants. We found that the correlations between dishonesty and economic preferences (e.g., risk preference) are almost different between private workers and public servants. Our findings suggest that the same anti-corruption methods implemented in the private sector might not be effective in the public sector.