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Abstract
Payment programs that incentivize conservation practices on farms produce additional
environmental gains only if farmers receiving payments adopt practices that they would not have
adopted without the payment. For some conservation practices, the “additionality” of payments
may be low if programs do not differentiate between farmers who would only adopt with a
payment and those farmers that may find adoption of the practice profitably even without a
payment. We use a Propensity Score Matching method to estimate unobserved counterfactual
adoption behavior in a nationwide survey of farmers and calculate the level of additionality for
five separate conservation payments in the U.S. that target nutrient management, pest
management, conservation tillage, soil conservation, and buffer practices. We find high levels of
additionality across the five types of conservation payment types, suggesting that these programs
are effective in producing environment gains that would not have occurred without payment
incentives.