Effects of Protected Area Size on Conservation Return on Investment

The objective of this research is to examine how protected area size influences the conservation benefit and acquisition cost of creating a protected area, how the resulting effects influence the predicted rate of return on investment (ROI), and how those relationships change prioritization decision-making for selecting protected areas compared with decisions based only on conservation benefit and decisions based only on acquisition cost. The objective is accomplished in an econometric framework by analyzing the parcel-level acquisition cost and conservation benefit measured by the change in potential fragmentation patterns on the landscape resulting from protection. We focus on areas acquired by The Nature Conservancy in central and southern Appalachia, United States. As an indicator of the change in landscape fragmentation, we use a fragmentation statistic known as effective mesh size. Although the effect of protected parcel size on predicted ROI is inelastic, greater conservation effectiveness is obtained with larger protected parcels than with smaller ones on average. Protected parcel size influences parcels’ rankings for protection more (less) when only the predicted change in effective mesh size of protected area (only the predicted acquisition cost per area) is used for prioritizing parcels than when the ranking of parcels is determined by the predicted ROI. These findings imply that, although protected parcel size is important, failure to prioritize using ROI could result in an inappropriate level of emphasis being given to protected parcel size than is warranted.