Anna Lou Abatayo | EconSES

Drivers of Marine Protection

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The project “Why Here? Drivers of Marine Protection in the Coral Triangle” is an NWO Open Competition XS project that investigates why marine protected areas are established in some locations but not others. Combining spatial data, economic indicators, and surveys of conservation practitioners, the project examines how ecological priorities, political feasibility, and economic considerations shape conservation decisions across the world’s most biodiverse marine region.

Emerging Fisheries and Public Opinion: Insights From a Survey Experiment on Mesopelagic Fishing

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Anna Lou Abatayo receives NWO XS grant to study marine protection in the Coral Triangle

Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

EconSES is proud to congratulate Dr. Anna Lou Abatayo on receiving the NWO Open Competition SSH XS grant for her project, “Why Here? Drivers of Marine Protection in the Coral Triangle.”

Marine protected areas (MPAs) have become one of the world’s most important tools for conserving marine biodiversity. Yet despite their rapid expansion, surprisingly little is known about why protected areas are established in some locations but not others. Dr. Abatayo’s project seeks to answer this fundamental question by examining the factors that shape the placement of MPAs across the Coral Triangle, the world’s most biodiverse marine region.

Combining harmonized spatial datasets, economic indicators, and surveys of conservation practitioners, the project will investigate whether marine protected areas are systematically established where ecological value is highest, or whether political and economic considerations also play an important role. Rather than focusing on the impacts of protected areas, the research addresses an equally important but often overlooked question: how conservation policies are selected in the first place.

The NWO Open Competition SSH XS program supports bold, curiosity-driven ideas that have the potential to open new avenues of research. By enabling researchers to rapidly test innovative concepts, the program encourages scientific creativity and lays the groundwork for future breakthroughs.

For EconSES, the project aligns closely with its research on environmental governance, natural resource management, and biodiversity conservation. The findings are expected to provide new insights into how conservation priorities translate into spatial protection, helping policymakers design more effective and equitable marine conservation strategies.

Congratulations to Dr. Abatayo on this well-deserved recognition. We look forward to following the progress of this exciting research project and the new insights it will generate for conservation science and environmental policy.

Investigating the replicability of the social and behavioral sciences

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Investigating the reproducibility of the social and behavioural sciences

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Behavioural economics for understanding recreational fishers and fisheries

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Maite den Butter Wins Best Master's Thesis in Economics

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Congratulations to Maite den Butter for winning the Dutch REMagine Awards for the best master’s thesis in economics and business under the category “Broad Perspectives on Prosperity”.

Maite den Butter, a graduate of the MSc Economics of Sustainability (MME-D) program at Wageningen University, received the REMagine Award for her thesis examining the effects of Marine Protected Area (MPA) establishment on the well-being of coastal communities in Indonesia. While much of the existing literature focuses on the ecological benefits of MPAs, her research explores their broader social and economic impacts. In particular, the study investigates how conservation policies can shape livelihoods and welfare outcomes for people living near protected marine ecosystems.

Using household survey data and empirical analysis, Maite examined how communities living near long-established MPAs in Papua and West Papua experience changes in well-being following conservation interventions. Her research highlights how marine conservation policies can influence livelihoods, local economic opportunities, and overall community welfare. The findings contribute to a growing body of work that seeks to better understand the human dimensions of marine conservation.

The thesis was supervised by Anna Lou Abatayo and Andries Richter at Wageningen University. The study contributes to ongoing research at the group on marine systems, conservation policy, and the social-ecological dynamics of resource management. By examining both environmental and social outcomes, the work illustrates the importance of integrating economic and behavioral perspectives into marine conservation research.

We warmly congratulate Maite on this well-deserved recognition. Her achievement reflects the high quality of student research within the university. We look forward to seeing how her work continues to contribute to research on sustainable ocean governance and marine conservation.

More information is available at REMagine Award.

Citizen consensus and diverging views on benefit-sharing for genetic resources

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Supplementary materials can be found here.

Predicting the replicability of social and behavioural science claims in a crisis: The COVID-19 Preprint Replication Project

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Strengthening Rural Livelihoods and Resilience to Climate Change in Africa (GALILEO)

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

GALILEO is a Horizon Europe research and innovation project that aims to strengthen rural livelihoods and climate resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa through innovative agroforestry. Working with farmers, researchers, businesses, and policymakers across Senegal, Kenya, Ghana, and Cameroon, the project co-develops sustainable farming systems that integrate trees, crops, and livestock. By combining scientific research with local knowledge, GALILEO seeks to enhance biodiversity, improve food security, create new livelihood opportunities, and support climate change adaptation and mitigation through scalable, evidence-based agroforestry solutions. For more information about the grant, visit the GALILEO project website.

Impacts of Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss on Well-Being

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Climate change and biodiversity loss are among the most pressing challenges of our time, yet we still know surprisingly little about how they affect the well-being of people who depend most directly on natural resources. This project investigates these human dimensions by examining how environmental change and conservation interventions influence livelihoods, income, health, and resilience in developing countries. The project combines large-scale microdata, geospatial information, advanced econometric methods, and machine learning to generate robust causal evidence on the links between environmental change and human well-being. By integrating insights from environmental economics, spatial analysis, and data science, CHANGE aims to advance scientific understanding of the interactions between people and nature while providing evidence to support more effective, equitable, and sustainable environmental policies.

Public Goods and Bads with Vulnerable Individuals: How Information and Social Nudges Change Behavior

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

#Supplementary materials can be found #here.

Comparing access to US marine and terrestrial protected areas

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Supplementary materials can be found here.

North Sea Renewable Energy (NO-REGRETS)

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

NO-REGRETS is an NWO funded interdisciplinary research programme examining the ecological and socio-economic impacts of offshore wind expansion in the North Sea. Our work focuses on integrating ecological outcomes with socio-economic analyses, including natural capital accounting, ecosystem services, stakeholder perspectives, and policy evaluation, to assess trade-offs between renewable energy, fisheries, biodiversity conservation, and other marine uses. The project supports evidence-based marine spatial planning for a sustainable and economically viable North Sea energy transition. More information can be found in the project website.

Governing Climate Geoengineering: Side-Payments Are Not Enough

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Strategic Economic Trade-offs Between Climate Mitigation and Geoengineering

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The project “Strategic Economic Trade-offs Between Climate Mitigation and Geoengineering” is an NWO funded research project investigating the strategic interactions between climate mitigation and solar geoengineering. While geoengineering technologies have received growing scientific attention as a potential response to climate change, little is known about how their existence may influence climate mitigation efforts and international cooperation. Combining behavioral game theory with controlled economic experiments, STRATOS examines how decision-makers balance investments in emissions reduction against the possibility of geoengineering, how differences in climate preferences affect coordination, and whether institutions such as pledges can promote cooperation. By advancing our understanding of strategic decision-making under climate uncertainty, the project aims to inform the governance of emerging climate technologies and future international climate policy.

Resource booms and group punishment in a coupled social-ecological system

Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Solar geoengineering may lead to excessive cooling and high strategic uncertainty

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Supplementary materials can be found here. The data comes in four parts and can be downloaded here, here, here, and here.

Read our press release at Scientific Codex and at Eureka!. We were also cited in a news article at Kudos.

Also listen to my interview with Radio Ecoshock.

Risk preferences after a typhoon: An artefactual field experiment with fishers in the Philippines

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Factors Affecting Support for Transnational Conservation Targeting Migratory Species

Thu, 01 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Counterintuitive Proposals for Trans-boundary Ecological Compensation Under ‘No Net Loss' Biodiversity Policy

Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Endogenous vs. exogenous regulations in the commons

Tue, 01 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Supplementary materials can be found here.