Did you know that most of the land in the United States is privately owned? Approximately 60% of it, in fact. Therefore, how this land is managed has vast implications for the overall health of our environment—including our air and water. But, who makes a majority of those decisions and how do they go about doing it?

In this episode, Dr. Robyn Wilson and Dr. Rebecca Epanchin-Niell discuss their teams’ efforts to model private land management decision making using theories from economics, sociology, and psychology. The goal is that with a greater understanding of the decision-making processes of landowners, we can better design programs, incentives, and policies that benefit all.

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Special thanks to: Alaina Gallagher & Jill Gallagher for developmental editing assistance.

Read the transcript here.

SESYNC team project and paper info: Modeling Stewardship Decisions; Private land conservation decision-making: An integrative social science model

Additional Interesting Sources:

Zarook, R. (2022, December 9). Map of the Week: Mapping Private vs. Public Land in the United States. UBIQUE. American Geographical Society. https://ubique.americangeo.org/map-of-the-week/map-of-the-week-mapping-private-vs-public-land-in-the-united-states/#:~:text=Today%2C%20private%20individuals%20and%20corporations,%2C%20while%2032%25%20are%20forests.

Merrill, D., Pendleton, D., Alexander, S. et al. (2019, September 9). Here’s Who Owns the Most Land in America: The 100 largest private landowners in the U.S. own 40 million acres—an area the size of Florida. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-largest-landowners-in-us/?leadSource=uverify%20wall

Air Quality Inequality

Succinct Science—Audio Interviews from SESYNCBy The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC)Sep 23, 2021