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Abstract
This paper analyzes whether monetary incentives modify cooperative behavior in activities
that have been traditionally unpaid. We provide a simple theoretical framework and exploit variation
over time in community access to Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) within Mexican
common property communities to analyze whether payments increase work in forest protection
activities, which are increasingly incentivized under PES, and also explore their effects on other
community activities that remain unpaid. We find that cash incentives increase work, both in
the intensive and extensive margins, in forest conservation activities; however, we claim that
the framing of the incentive plays an important role in explaining cooperation in activities that
remain unpaid. Our findings indicate that, as long as agents are exposed to sanctions resulting
from deviant behavior and their actions are visible, lump-sum transfers without specfic work
conditionalities can be more effective than wages to promote cooperation. Given the increased
popularity of PES initiatives as tools to combat climate change, our findings are important
not only for environmental conservation but also for the sustainability and welfare of common
property communities.