MSU researchers find that farmers are more likely to reenroll their land in a conservation program if they talk to their neighbors about it.

Scientists from MSU’s Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability used a simulation model to study the amount of land farmers in the Wolong Nature Reserve in southwestern China reenrolled in the Grain-to-Green Program (GTGP), which aims to reduce soil erosion by converting sloping cropland to forest or grassland. Farmers receive an annual payment of either 5,000 pounds of grain or $498 for each 2.5 acres of enrolled in the program. In 2005, this was about 8 percent of the farmers’ income.

“To achieve global environmental sustainability, it is important to go beyond traditional economic and regulatory approaches,“ said Jiangua “Jack” Liu, center director and a co-author on the paper, Agent-basedModeling of the Effects of SocialNorms on Enrollment in Payments forEcosystem Services.

Xiaodong Chen, who conducted the research while working on his doctorate, and colleagues found that if farmers had the opportunity to interact with each other, they were willing to reenroll their land in the GTGP. And the more times they interacted, the more land was reenrolled.