Contested agricultural landscapes: From an individual to a common issue for stingless beekeepers a case from Veracruz, México

Land use change (LUC) alters habitat quality and the provision of ecosystem services that affect economic activities, such as beekeeping. For beekeeping, landscapes reveal individual decisions that determine its productive potential, thus, landscapes can be considered a common pool resource. To understand how land use preferences shape scenarios that suggest the aggregated effects of decisions on beekeeping in agricultural landscapes, a participatory valuation and an economic choice game were conducted in field workshops in Veracruz, México. We found that, although participants valued land use benefits differently, they integrated common benefits to create scenarios that sustained beekeeping, but these decisions were sensitive to external factors that disincentivize collective action. In addition, characteristics positively associated with collective action at the individual and group levels differ, suggesting emerging group identities. Exercises like these allow the exploration of CPR in complex scenarios such as landscapes, to understand the dynamics of individual and group preferences.