Assessing motivators and barriers for the adoption of productive forest restoration in Northeastern Pará, Brazilian Amazon

• Active restoration applying agroforestry is perceived as the best fit to promote long lasting forest restoration in the settled Northeastern mesoregion of Pará state. • Lack of awareness, financial incentives, and technical assistance were the three most preponderant barriers for the development of productive forest restoration. • A higher number of trees planted per productive area is linked with informal household characteristics such as lack of land title in an exploratory regression model. • Experts from the government sector presented the most convergent perceptions of the relative importance of socioecological factors and motivators. • Lack of engagement and a more delineated long-lasting plan undermines decision-makers to promote effective large-scale plans for restoration with a focus on agroforestry. The choice for an agricultural production system reflects land managers’ goals, available resources, socioecological conditions, and institutional context. To align development with conservation, players in tropical regions are increasingly turning to productive forest restoration as an alternative or increment to conventional agriculture — particularly where land degradation and abandonment are widespread. This study investigates the complex set of motivators and barriers that influence the adoption of productive restoration across the Northeastern mesoregion of Pará, Brazil. Using semi-structured interviews and a gamified ranking exercise, a total of 53 informants (specialists and farmers) were approached. Ranking indices were obtained and applied in a principal component analysis (PCA) to compare the relative importance of predefined socioecological and motivational factors, and the level of convergence among subgroups of informants. An exploratory regression model was conducted to examine associations between the extent of tree planting and management practices, external support, land tenure, and household characteristics. Specialists largely converged that agroforestry-based active restoration is the most suitable system for the region, a view broadly consistent with farmers’ accounts. However, smallholder farmers — those most inclined toward agroecological practices — often face limited technical assistance and restricted access to credit, constraining more consistent transitions to agroecological systems. The exploratory model highlights factors and relationships warranting further attention, including a counterintuitive negative association between tree planting and two tenure-related variables: formal land title and Rural Environmental Registry (CAR). This pattern is, nevertheless, consistent with the informal nature of agroforestry practice. The results provide an integrated assessment of the determinants and barriers to productive restoration in NE Pará, with relevance to other tropical frontiers. Future work should (i) track adoption longitudinally to distinguish entry, persistence, and scale-up enterprises; (ii) incorporate program exposure, market access, and risk preferences where applicable; and (iii) test support instruments (e.g., technical assistance, credit) and tenure arrangements using quasi-experimental or panel designs, alongside improved remote sensing to differentiate managed from spontaneous regrowth.