Alexander Pfaff

About

Alexander Pfaff is a professor affiliated with the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. His research includes the study of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs, which are implemented globally to incentivize conservation behaviors by compensating land users. Unlike protected areas, PES programs aim to raise local acceptance of conservation by providing conditional payments to participants. Pfaff's work investigates the effects of temporary PES on conservation behaviors, particularly whether such payments crowd out or crowd in conservation efforts after the payments end. In a recent study conducted in Colombia, Pfaff and his colleagues performed lab-in-the-field experiments with 676 farmers to assess the impact of temporary PES on forest conservation. Their findings indicate that conservation behaviors do not decline after the cessation of payments; rather, conservation remains above baseline levels, suggesting a short-run crowding-in effect. This research contributes to the understanding of how temporary financial incentives influence long-term conservation outcomes and informs policy design for ecosystem service programs.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Economics
• Natural resource economics
• Ecology
• Business
• Environmental resource management
• Sociology
• Environmental science
• Geography
• Agroforestry

Selected publications

• The Effectiveness of Forest Conservation Policies and Programs

  Annual Review of Resource Economics · 2020 · 212 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  The world's forests provide valuable contributions to people but continue to be threatened by agricultural expansion and other land uses. Counterfactual-based methods are increasingly used to evaluate forest conservation initiatives. This review synthesizes recent studies quantifying the impacts of such policies and programs. Extending past reviews focused on instrument choice, design, and implementation, our theory of change explicitly acknowledges context. Screening over 60,000 abstracts yield…

  DOI

• What Drives the Erasure of Protected Areas? Evidence from across the Brazilian Amazon

  Ecological Economics · 2020 · 41 citations

  DOI

• A diverse portfolio of marine protected areas can better advance global conservation and equity

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024-02-26 · 33 citations

  articleOpen access

  Marine protected areas (MPAs) are widely used for ocean conservation, yet the relative impacts of various types of MPAs are poorly understood. We estimated impacts on fish biomass from no-take and multiple-use (fished) MPAs, employing a rigorous matched counterfactual design with a global dataset of >14,000 surveys in and around 216 MPAs. Both no-take and multiple-use MPAs generated positive conservation outcomes relative to no protection (58.2% and 12.6% fish biomass increases, respectively), w…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Time to fix the biodiversity leak

  Science · 2025-02-13 · 29 citations

  article

  The risk that locally successful nature conservation may be shifting problems elsewhere can no longer be ignored.

  PublisherDOI

• Forest concessions and eco-certifications in the Peruvian Amazon: Deforestation impacts of logging rights and logging restrictions

  Journal of Environmental Economics and Management · 2022 · 29 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Juan Robalino

  Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Ensenanza Catie

  44 shared

• Alexander van Geen

  Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

  25 shared

• Derya Keles

  Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée

  18 shared

• María Alejandra Vélez

  17 shared

• Kenneth Broad

  17 shared

• Arturo Sánchez‐Azofeifa

  University of Alberta

  16 shared

• Philippe Delacote

  Université de Strasbourg

  14 shared

• Michael B. Mascia

  Conservation International

  13 shared

Awards & honors

• Duke professor named TBJ's Leaders in Diversity Lifetime Ach…

Similar researchers at Duke University

• Subhrendu K. Pattanayakh-70
• Brian Murrayh-45
• Jeffrey R. Vincenth-38