Land-clearing forest fires in Indonesia cause enormous private and social losses from greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, habitat destruction, worsened human health, and strained international relations. These fires are almost always deliberately set, often by smallholders as they seek to expand farm size. The Government of Indonesia has taken primarily a regulatory approach to preventing …
This paper presents one of the first randomized evaluations of collective pay-for-performance payments for ecosystem services. We test whether community-level fiscal incentives can curtail the use of land-clearing fire, a major source of emissions and negative health externalities. The program was implemented over the 2018 fire season in Indonesia with three parts: (a) awareness raising and…