The psychological appeal of owning private land for conservation

Continued threats to global biodiversity have stimulated interest in the private purchase of land for conservation. Though not a new phenomenon, private land conservation appears to be on the rise, and its ambiguous position between philanthropy and financial investment leads to questions about the nature of landowner motives. To examine these motives, we used grounded theory techniques to analyze transcripts of narrative interviews with the owners of privately conserved areas (PCAs) and assessed what landowners had in common across a variety of cultural and policy contexts. The result was a model of PCA engagement in which landowners became personally invested in the management of PCAs and in the nature they protected. We found that PCAs can be conceptualized not merely as philanthropic endeavors or investments, but also as meaningful projects in which their owners engage. We integrated our findings with literature indicating that fundamental psychological drives for autonomy, efficacy, and social connection facilitate the engagement process, regardless of whether conservation motivation is intrinsic or extrinsic. Our findings suggest that land conservation programs might benefit from allowing landowner autonomy to the maximum extent possible, developing best practice standards against which landowners can assess their efficacy, and facilitating the development of landowner networks.