Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T17:16:50.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Protected areas and economic welfare: an impact evaluation of national parks on local workers' wages in Costa Rica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2014

Juan Robalino  and
Laura Villalobos
Juan Robalino
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Universidad de Costa Rica and Environment for Development Initiative, CATIE, 7170, CATIE, Turrialba, Costa Rica. Tel: 2558-2522. E-mail: [email protected]
Laura Villalobos
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The number of protected areas around the world has significantly increased. However, the effects of this policy on the wellbeing of local households are still under debate. Using pre-treatment characteristics and household surveys with highly disaggregated geographic reference, we explore how national parks affect the wages of local workers in Costa Rica. We use matching techniques to control for the endogenous location of parks. We find that parks' effects on wages are, on average, positive and significant, but the magnitudes vary. Wages close to parks are higher for local workers living near tourist entrances. However, there is no robust evidence of positive effects for those close to parks but far away from tourist entrances. With our individual-level data, we also show that the positive effects on local households might not be as large as suggested by previous studies that use aggregated level data containing both local and immigrant households.

Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , June 2015 , pp. 283 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andam, K., Ferraro, P.J., Simis, K.R., Healy, A., and Holland, M. (2010), ‘Protected areas reduced poverty in Costa Rica and Thailand’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(22): 9996–10001.Google Scholar
Black, S.E. and Strahan, F.E. (2001), ‘The division of spoils: rent-sharing and discrimination in a regulated industry’, American Economic Review 91(4): 814–831.Google Scholar
Blanchflower, D.G., Oswald, A.J., and Sanfey, P. (1996), ‘Wages, profits and rent-sharing’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 111: 227–251.Google Scholar
Canavire-Bacarreza, G. and Hanauer, M.M. (2013), ‘Estimating the impacts of Bolivia's protected areas on poverty’, World Development 41: 265–285.Google Scholar
Dehejia, R.H. and Wahba, S. (2001), ‘Propensity score-matching methods for nonexperimental causal studies’, Review of Economics and Statistics 84(1): 151–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duffy-Deno, K.T. (1998), ‘The effect of federal wilderness on county growth in the intermountain western United States’, Journal of Regional Science 38(1): 109–136.Google Scholar
Ferraro, P.J. and Hanauer, M.M. (2011), ‘Protecting ecosystems and alleviating poverty with parks and reserves: ‘win-win’ or tradeoffs?', Environmental and Resource Economics 48(2): 269–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferraro, P.J., Hanauer, M.M., and Sims, K.R. (2011), ‘Conditions associated with protected area success in conservation and poverty reduction’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108(34): 13913–13918.Google Scholar
Fortin, M.J. and Gagnon, C. (1999), ‘An assessment of social impacts of national parks on communities in Quebec, Canada’, Environmental Conservation 26(3): 200–211.Google Scholar
Funkhouser, E. (1996), ‘The urban informal sector in Central America: household survey evidence’, World Development 24(11): 1737–1751.Google Scholar
Funkhouser, E. (1998), ‘Changes in the returns to education in Costa Rica’, Journal of Development Economics 57(2): 289–317.Google Scholar
Heckman, J. (1974), ‘Shadow prices, market wages, and labor supply’, Econometrica 42(4): 679–694.Google Scholar
Heckman, J. (1979), ‘Sample selection bias as a specification error’, Econometrica 47(1): 153–161.Google Scholar
Hill, J.L., Brooks-Gunn, J., and Waldfogel, J. (2003), ‘Sustained effects of high participation in an early intervention for low-birth-weight premature infants’, Developmental Psychology 39(4): 730–744.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ho, D., Imai, K., King, G., and Stuart, E. (2007), ‘Matching as nonparametric preprocessing for reducing model dependence in parametric causal inference’, Political Analysis 15(3): 199–236.Google Scholar
IUCN (1994), Guidelines for Protected Areas Management Categories, Cambridge and Gland: International Union for the Conservation of Nature.Google Scholar
Joppa, L.N., Loarie, S.R., and Pimm, S.L. (2009), ‘On population growth near protected areas’, PLoS ONE 4(1): e4279.Google Scholar
Lewis, D.J., Hunt, G.L., and Plantinga, A.J. (2002), ‘Public conservation land and employment growth in the Northern Forest Region’, Land Economics 78(2): 245–259.Google Scholar
Lewis, D.J., Hunt, G.L., and Plantinga, A.J. (2003), ‘Does public lands policy affect local wage growth?’, Growth and Change 34(1): 64–86.Google Scholar
List, J., Margolis, M., and Osgood, D. (2006), ‘Is the Endangered Species Act endangering species?’, NBER Working Paper No. 12777, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Morgan, S.L. and Winship, C. (2007), Counterfactuals and Causal Inference: Methods and Principles for Social Research, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mullan, K., Kontoleon, A., Swanson, T.M., and Zha, S. (2009), ‘Evaluation of the impact of the natural forest protection program on rural household livelihoods’, Environmental Management 45(3): 513–525.Google Scholar
Pfaff, A. and Robalino, J.A. (2008), ‘Human choices affect conservation impact: correct impact evaluation after the fact and looking forward’, in Palmer, C. and Engel, S. (eds), Avoided Deforestation: Prospects for Mitigating Climate Change, Oxford: Routledge, pp. 192–207.Google Scholar
Pfaff, A. and Robalino, J.A. (2012), ‘Protecting forests, biodiversity, and the climate: predicting policy impact to improve policy choice’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy 28(1): 164–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pfaff, A., Robalino, J.A., Sanchez-Azofeifa, G.A., Andam, K., and Ferraro, P. (2009), ‘Park location affects forest protection: land characteristics cause differences in park impacts across Costa Rica’, B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy 9(2): article 5.Google Scholar
Pfeffer, M.J., Schelhas, J.W., and Day, L.A. (2001), ‘Forest conservation, value conflict, and interest formation in a Honduran national park’, Rural Sociology 66: 382–402.Google Scholar
Robalino, J.A. (2007), ‘Land conservation policies and income distribution: who bears the burden of our environmental efforts?’, Environment and Development Economics 12(4): 521–533.Google Scholar
Rosenbaum, P.R. and Rubin, D.B. (1983), ‘The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects’, Biometrika 70: 41–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sims, K.R. (2010), ‘Conservation and development: evidence from Thai protected areas’, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 60(2): 94–114.Google Scholar
SINAC (2006), El Sistema de Áreas Silvestres Protegidas de Costa Rica: Informe Nacional para el II Congreso Mesoamericano de Áreas Protegidas, San José: Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación.Google Scholar
SINAC (2007), Áreas silvestres protegidas de Costa Rica: Informe nacional para presentar al II congreso latinoamericano de parques nacionales y otras áreas protegidas, San José: Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación.Google Scholar
UN (2012), The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012, New York: United Nations.Google Scholar
Villalobos, L. (2009), ‘The effects of National Parks on local communities' wages and employment in Costa Rica’, MSc thesis, CATIE (Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza), Turrialba, Costa Rica.Google Scholar
von Wacher, T. and Schmieder, J.F. (2009), ‘Does wage persistence matter for employment fluctuations? Evidence from displaced workers’, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2(3): 1–21.Google Scholar
Weesie, J. (1999), ‘Sg121: Seemingly unrelated estimation and the cluster-adjusted sandwich estimator’, Stata Technical Bulletin 52: 34–47; reprinted in Stata Technical Bulletin Reprints9: 231–248, College Station, TX: Stata Press.Google Scholar
Wittemyer, G., Elsen, P., Bean, W.T., Burton, A.C.O., and Brashares, J.S. (2008), ‘Accelerated human population growth at protected area edges’, Science 321(5885): 123–126.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Robalino and Villalobos Supplementary Material

Appendix

Download Robalino and Villalobos Supplementary Material(PDF)
PDF 17.4 KB