Incentive-based mechanisms can contribute to rural development and deliver environmental
services, but need to be attractive to landowners and communities to ensure their
participation. Here we study the views of landowners and agrarian communities (ejidos)
from central Jalisco in Mexico to identify characteristics that payment for environmental
services (PES) programs conserving/enhancing forest cover could include in their design. A
choice experiment was applied to 161 landowners and ejido-landowners. Results show that
importance and dependency on cash payments can decrease if interventions to promote
local development through improved health and education services and generation of
employment and productive projects are included. Responses indicate that communal
forested areas in ejidos would be most likely to enroll into PES. In some cases grasslands
could be afforested. Agroforestry practices providing other environmental services could
also be implemented (e.g. windbreaks). Potential enrolment is lower in agricultural and
peri-urban areas due to higher opportunity costs. Higher payments favour enrolment but
may compromise the program’s efficiency since aggregated cash-flow over long periods
can exceed the present value of the land itself in some areas. Offering a mix of cash and
non-cash benefits based on local developmental needs might be the best way to promote
participation in PES.