Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This paper analyzes the effects of U.S. land preservation policy and implementation on two groups of policy stakeholders: landowner beneficiaries and nonprofit implementation partners. Policy feedback research provides insights into the political effects of policy and implementation but does not generally speak to other types of effects that may or may not lead to changes in future policy. This paper asks the question, what are the effects of policy and implementation on the behavior and attitudes of citizen beneficiaries and nonprofit organizations engaged in land conservation? The regression analysis utilizes a dataset consisting of a national survey of 504 landowner participants in the Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program (FRPP) to assess the effect of agency advocacy and education on changes in stakeholder attitudes and behavior. The program is administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) throughout the United States. A second dataset consists of survey responses from partner nonprofits tasked with holding conservation easements funded by FRPP in partnership with NRCS.

Preliminary findings indicate that agency advocacy of conservation practices, alternative agricultural marketing techniques, and successional planning has statistically significant and meaningful influence on changes in landowner behaviors and attitudes. That the behaviors the agency is promoting are not required by the policy suggest the agency is playing a role in shaping the priorities of landowners and land trusts. Further analysis shows that the effect on landowners was similar when the advocacy came directly from either NRCS staff or from the land trust partner. These findings support growing research showing that public agencies have an independent influence on citizens and organizations with which they interact. Such influence happens on a range of behaviors that may or may not lead to changes in political behavior, but which have implications for democracy, distributed governance arrangements, and the use of discretion in policy implementation.

In addition to expanding empirical research on the effects of policy and implementation, this research expands policy feedback scholarship to a policy domain heretofore not represented in the literature: non-regulatory environmental policy. The puzzle this paper contributes to is understanding the range of effects public agency action and policy has on citizens and groups by providing an empirical study of a non-regulatory and collaborative policy area.