Combining economic experiments and ecological-economic modelling: application to agri-environment schemes for biodiversity conservation

Economic experiments related to biodiversity conservation policies provide valuable insights into how individuals respond to specific policy designs. However, they provide limited guidance on how to design cost-effective conservation policies at the landscape level. Ecological-economic models - integrating ecological dynamics with economic decision-making in optimization procedures - are well-suited to this purpose. Yet they nearly always assume purely profit-maximizing behaviour, overlooking deviations from this behaviour observed in practice. Our methodological aim is to combine these two approaches by incorporating behavioural data from a charitable-giving based laboratory experiment with student participants into an established decision-support software based on an ecological-economic model. We empirically explore how pro-environmental motives might influence participation in agri-environment schemes (AES) through decision support software applied to meadow bird conservation. Adjusting the modelling procedure to reflect intrinsic motives, we compare outcomes with those generated under standard profit-maximization assumption. The results indicate that while behavioural motives can increase participation, their overall impact on cost-effective AES design recommendations remain modest.