Environmental motivations in an ongoing PES program in the Colombian Amazon

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are often regarded as incentive-based environmental policy programs that can potentially “crowd out” participants’ intrinsic conservation motivations. However, conservation motivations may also coexist and reinforce each other under certain program designs, implementation practices and household contexts. In contrast to studies focusing on post-program persistence, this article examines motivational dynamics while incentives are active. We study whether reported intrinsic and extrinsic motivations move in opposite directions or coexist among households enrolled in Colombia’s Amazon Forest Incentive Program (IFA) in a high-deforestation risk region during the study period. Using two-wave panel survey data (2022–2023) from 144 program participants and 43 eligible non-participants of an ongoing program, we relate within-household changes in motivations to three exposure measures: participation status, the number of payments received, and the share of PES payments relative to household income. Participation was associated with stronger guilt-related motivation, while a higher payment-to-income share (payment salience) was associated with stronger intrinsic motivations linked to self-image, identity, and moral responsibility. The number of payments received showed weak and inconsistent associations with intrinsic motivations. Higher payment salience was also associated with greater recognition of payments as a conservation incentive without evidence of displacement of intrinsic motivations over the study period, supporting a coexistence interpretation rather than a simple trade-off. Overall, the results highlight associations between payment salience, structural context, and motivational dynamics.