Choice experiments on land managers' participation in environmental programs: A systematic review and meta‐analysis of estimate validity

Abstract Discrete choice experiments are increasingly being used to estimate land managers' willingness to accept participation in incentive‐based environmental programs. This is a specific application of discrete choice experiments: the estimation of willingness to accept for a private good (program participation) where respondents have to make trade‐offs between payments and the business costs required to improve the provision of the (environmental) public good targeted by the program. Previous reviews fail to provide methodological insights into the use of discrete choice experiments in this valuation context. In this study, we conduct a review of 80 studies (containing up to 93 sample‐based observations) published in the Web of Science Core Collection, all of which apply discrete choice experiments to examine land managers' (farmers' and foresters') willingness to accept for participating in incentive‐based environmental programs. Based on this systematic review, we report quantitative information on key features regarding policy settings, experiment design and implementation, and willingness to accept results. We conclude that many of the analyzed studies do not follow best practices for discrete choice experiments in particular and stated preference methods in general. We also use a construct validity indicator to assess whether willingness to accept estimates align with expectations about land managers' utility. The results from the meta‐analysis show that special care should be taken in applications that focus on Africa, include contract design attributes, and use in‐person surveys, among other features. Recommendations are provided to enable practitioners to obtain more accurate welfare estimates for better policy‐making support.