A conjoint analysis of farmer preferences for community forestry contracts in the Sumber Jaya Watershed, Indonesia

A wide range of policy instruments have been devised and applied to support the goals of sustainable forestry management. Community forestry programs can contain elements of several of those instruments. This paper considers the design of community forestry contracts in the Sumber Jaya area of Indonesia where community forestry contracts are agreements between the Forestry Department and community groups that provide group members with time-bound leasehold rights to protection forests, on the condition that farmers abide by specified land-use restrictions and pay any required fees. Farmers perceive that the contracts represent a bundle of restrictions and inducements, some of which are explicitly stated in the contract and others that are implied by the contract. Conjoint analysis was used to quantify farmers' tradeoffs among the explicit and implicit attributes of the contracts. The results of logit and ordered logit models show that farmers are most concerned about the length of the contract, and relatively unconcerned about requirements on tree density and species composition. An implicit attribute, greater access to forestry and agroforestry extension, emerges as an important implicit attribute. The results imply that farmers in this part of Indonesia would be willing to abide by fairly strict limitations on land use, provided that they can be assured of long-term rights to the planted trees. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.