A recent paper from Kentucky provides a really interesting look at landowner compliance with terms of a grassland conservation program. We talk about landowner adoption rates of programs quite a bit, but there are less often estimates of the rate at which landowners follow the terms of the incentives.

First off, it was interesting to see an estimated rate at which contracts conformed to the wildlife-friendly recommendations: 70%. The other interesting thing to me was the landowners that didn’t conform seemed to be randomly spread out and not clustered together. However, landowner adoption of programs is often clustered as neighbors talk with each other and influence each other. It seems like not conforming didn’t “spread” in the same way.