Small-scale forestry and carbon offset markets: An empirical study of Vermont Current Use forest landowner willingness to accept carbon credit programs
Affiliation
Univ Arizona, Sch Nat Resources & EnvironmIssue Date
2018-08-14
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Public Library of ScienceCitation
White AE, Lutz DA, Howarth RB, Soto JR (2018) Small-scale forestry and carbon offset markets: An empirical study of Vermont Current Use forest landowner willingness to accept carbon credit programs. PLoS ONE 13(8): e0201967. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201967Journal
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© 2018 White et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
This study investigates the preferences of small forest landowners regarding forest carbon credit programs while documenting characteristics of potentially successful frameworks. We designed hypothetical carbon credit programs with aggregated carbon offset projects and requirements of existing voluntary and compliance protocols in mind. We administered a mail survey to 992 forest landowners in Vermont’s Current Use Program utilizing best-worst choice, a novel preference elicitation technique, to elicit their preferences about these programs. We found that small forest landowners see revenue as the most important factor in a carbon credit program and the duration of the program as the least important factor. Landowners reported that shorter program duration, higher revenue, and lower withdrawal penalties positively impact their willingness to accept forest carbon credit programs. Notably, our study includes carbon credit program implementer as a key program attribute, allowing us to quantify landowners’ tradeoffs between non-profit, for-profit, and government organizations. Overall, we found that landowners significantly prefer working with a non-profit organization. Based on monetary estimates of willingness-to-accept compensation, our results suggest that aggregated forest carbon offset projects incorporating small forest landowners could be piloted successfully in Vermont by non-profit organizations while maintaining relatively strict guidelines of existing carbon offset protocols.Note
Open access journal.ISSN
1932-6203DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.020196710.1371/journal.pone.0201967.g001
10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.g002
10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.g003
10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.t001
10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.t002
10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.t003
10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.t004
10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.t005
10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.t006
10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.s001
10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.s002
10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.s003
10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.s004
Version
Final published versionAdditional Links
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201967http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.g001
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.g002
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.g003
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.t001
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.t002
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.t003
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.t004
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.t005
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.t006
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.s001
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.s002
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.s003
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201967.s004
ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1371/journal.pone.0201967
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as © 2018 White et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.