Equilibrium Behavior in the Conservation Easement Game
研究了保护地役权计划中土地所有者和居民的私人货币激励，通过实验发现保护决策仅基于私人激励而不考虑公共物品，可能导致保护非最优甚至降低社会福利。
<i>Conservation easements allow landowners to collect earnings from their land, while reducing their tax burdens because the land cannot be sold into development. Conservation assures open space amenities for nearby residents, however, the residents bear a tax increase that offsets the owner’s tax reduction. We develop a game-theoretic model of the private monetary incentives induced by conservation easement programs, and use an experiment to verify that conservation decisions are made based on private incentives and without consideration of the public goods conservation provides. This implies that, unless land trusts are discriminating, conservation easements need not lead to optimal conservation, and may even reduce social welfare.</i>