TY - JOUR
T1 - Limitations of outsourcing on-the-ground biodiversity conservation
AU - Iacona, Gwenllian D.
AU - Bode, Michael
AU - Armsworth, Paul R.
N1 - Funding Information:
G.D.I. was supported on a graduate research assistantship and short-term visitor fellowship from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, an institute sponsored by the National Science Foundation through NSF Award #DBI-1300426, with additional support from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a short-term visitor fellowship from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions. We are grateful to A. Wyss, D. Ray, and J. Fitzsimmons for case study information about conservation organization decision making. We are also grateful to members of the Armsworth lab, I. Chad?s, G. Lennox, D. Simberloff, L. Gross, and D. Hodges for helpful discussions and comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Society for Conservation Biology
PY - 2016/12/1
Y1 - 2016/12/1
N2 - To counteract global species decline, modern biodiversity conservation engages in large projects, spends billions of dollars, and includes many organizations working simultaneously within regions. To add to this complexity, the conservation sector has hierarchical structure, where conservation actions are often outsourced by funders (foundations, government, etc.) to local organizations that work on-the-ground. In contrast, conservation science usually assumes that a single organization makes resource allocation decisions. This discrepancy calls for theory to understand how the expected biodiversity outcomes change when interactions between organizations are accounted for. Here, we used a game theoretic model to explore how biodiversity outcomes are affected by vertical and horizontal interactions between 3 conservation organizations: a funder that outsourced its actions and 2 local conservation organizations that work on-the-ground. Interactions between the organizations changed the spending decisions made by individual organizations, and thereby the magnitude and direction of the conservation benefits. We showed that funders would struggle to incentivize recipient organizations with set priorities to perform desired actions, even when they control substantial amounts of the funding and employ common contracting approaches to enhance outcomes. Instead, biodiversity outcomes depended on priority alignment across the organizations. Conservation outcomes for the funder were improved by strategic interactions when organizational priorities were well aligned, but decreased when priorities were misaligned. Meanwhile, local organizations had improved outcomes regardless of alignment due to additional funding in the system. Given that conservation often involves the aggregate actions of multiple organizations with different objectives, strategic interactions between organizations need to be considered if we are to predict possible outcomes of conservation programs or costs of achieving conservation targets.
AB - To counteract global species decline, modern biodiversity conservation engages in large projects, spends billions of dollars, and includes many organizations working simultaneously within regions. To add to this complexity, the conservation sector has hierarchical structure, where conservation actions are often outsourced by funders (foundations, government, etc.) to local organizations that work on-the-ground. In contrast, conservation science usually assumes that a single organization makes resource allocation decisions. This discrepancy calls for theory to understand how the expected biodiversity outcomes change when interactions between organizations are accounted for. Here, we used a game theoretic model to explore how biodiversity outcomes are affected by vertical and horizontal interactions between 3 conservation organizations: a funder that outsourced its actions and 2 local conservation organizations that work on-the-ground. Interactions between the organizations changed the spending decisions made by individual organizations, and thereby the magnitude and direction of the conservation benefits. We showed that funders would struggle to incentivize recipient organizations with set priorities to perform desired actions, even when they control substantial amounts of the funding and employ common contracting approaches to enhance outcomes. Instead, biodiversity outcomes depended on priority alignment across the organizations. Conservation outcomes for the funder were improved by strategic interactions when organizational priorities were well aligned, but decreased when priorities were misaligned. Meanwhile, local organizations had improved outcomes regardless of alignment due to additional funding in the system. Given that conservation often involves the aggregate actions of multiple organizations with different objectives, strategic interactions between organizations need to be considered if we are to predict possible outcomes of conservation programs or costs of achieving conservation targets.
KW - Nash equilibrium
KW - conservation finance
KW - crowding out
KW - efecto desplazamiento
KW - equilibrio de Nash
KW - financiamiento de la conservación
KW - game theory
KW - hierarchical organization interactions
KW - interacciones de la organización jerárquica
KW - teoría de juegos
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84994075047&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84994075047&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/cobi.12739
DO - 10.1111/cobi.12739
M3 - Article
C2 - 27112504
AN - SCOPUS:84994075047
SN - 0888-8892
VL - 30
SP - 1245
EP - 1254
JO - Conservation Biology
JF - Conservation Biology
IS - 6
ER -