By: Virginia Cecchini Manara. 

In the last decade, the global environmental agenda has started to change its focus. For years, environmental law and policy concentrated on preventing or mitigating damage — trying to slow down the pace of loss. Today, the challenge is broader: we are called not only to protect what is left, but also to restore what has already been damaged.

From the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030) to the recently adopted EU Nature Restoration Law, governments are setting ambitious targets to bring degraded ecosystems back to life. The idea is that restoration can help rebuild biodiversity, support local livelihoods, and strengthen resilience to climate change. Yet one crucial question remains: how can societies mobilize people to engage in restoration, especially when the damage is not directly their fault?

This was the central question behind our recent study, published in “Ecological Economics” as Back to the Future: An Experiment on Ecological Restoration. The research, conducted by Virginia Cecchini Manara (University of Milan), Eleonora Ciscato (University of Milan), Pietro Guarnieri (University of Pisa), and Lorenzo Spadoni (University of Cassino), combines law, economics, and behavioral science to explore how individuals decide whether — and how much — to contribute to restoring a damaged environment.

From prevention to restoration: a new policy paradigm

The new restoration agenda represents a profound shift in environmental thinking. For decades, the dominant logic was preventive: regulate emissions, protect endangered species, and minimize pollution. Restoration, instead, asks us to take responsibility for the past — to invest resources, time, and effort into repairing ecosystems that previous generations have depleted.

This shift raises not only technical and financial questions but also moral and institutional ones. Restoration often concerns “restorable goods” — resources that once provided benefits to everyone (like forests, rivers, wetlands), but that were degraded over time by multiple lawful actions. Because these damages are cumulative and often legal, no single polluter can be identified and no straightforward liability rule applies.

How, then, can society create incentives for people to restore something they did not personally destroy? And how do different governance models — public, private, or community-based — shape our willingness to act?

An experiment on restoration behavior

To answer these questions, we designed a behavioral experiment linking two classic economic situations: a common-pool resource game and a public good game.

Participants — more than 500 people recruited in the UK through the online platform Prolific — were asked to manage a virtual forest. The experiment took place in two stages:

– Extraction stage (the common-pool resource game): each participant, grouped with two others, decided how many trees to cut from a shared forest of six trees. Each tree cut produced a personal gain in “timber value”.

– Restoration stage (the public good game): participants then decided how many trees to replant, at a personal cost. The benefits from the restored forest — in the form of “fresh air points” — were shared equally among all members of the group.

The design allowed us to simulate two key real-world situations. In some cases, the same people were responsible for both extraction and restoration (we called this the Baseline condition). In others, the group restoring the forest was different from the one that had cut it (the Only Restoration condition).

We also introduced a treatment to vary the effectiveness of restoration: sometimes replanting was highly productive (each tree planted generated many “fresh air” points); sometimes it was less so, simulating a low-efficiency restoration project.

This combination of conditions allowed us to ask two main questions:

• Does taking part in resource depletion influence later restoration behavior?
• Do material incentives (like higher returns from restoration) affect how much people contribute?

What we found: when history matters

The first key result is that history matters. Participants who had taken part in the extraction phase tended to restore less than those who were only called to restore a forest depleted by others.

In the Baseline condition — when people were both extractors and restorers — those who had cut more trees also tended to plant fewer in the second phase. This behavioral “lock-in” suggests that exploitation habits, once formed, carry over into subsequent decisions, even when the context changes. People seemed to remain consistent with their previous behavior rather than reconsider it.

By contrast, participants in the Only Restoration condition showed the opposite pattern. The more degraded the forest they inherited, the more they restored. These subjects seemed more willing to take action when they faced a visible, urgent environmental loss — perhaps because they felt responsible for the future rather than guilty for the past.

This finding has important implications for climate and biodiversity policy. It suggests that restoration campaigns may be more successful when they involve new actors, not those directly implicated in the initial degradation. In other words, assigning restoration to communities, NGOs, or citizens who are “free from the burden of guilt” could yield better results than relying solely on the agents who caused the damage, especially when liability is diffuse.

What we didn’t find: incentives are not everything

A second surprising finding concerns economic incentives. In the experiment, we varied the marginal return from restoration — simulating, for example, how much fresh air a replanted forest might produce. In principle, higher returns should motivate greater restoration effort. Yet in practice, participants’ behavior hardly changed.

This suggests that when it comes to repairing environmental harm, moral and social motivations can outweigh purely economic ones. People do not always respond to efficiency gains or financial incentives — they are driven instead by beliefs, values, and social expectations.

Indeed, our post-experiment survey confirmed this pattern. Participants who agreed with the statement “planting trees is the right thing to do” — and who believed that most others shared this view — were significantly more likely to contribute to restoration, regardless of costs or expected payoffs.

This evidence resonates with a growing literature in behavioral economics and psychology emphasizing the role of social norms in shaping environmental behavior. When people perceive restoration as a shared moral duty, they are more willing to act collectively — even in the absence of strict regulations or tangible rewards.

From individual choices to collective governance

What do these experimental results tell us about real-world restoration policy?

First, they highlight the limits of a purely top-down or market-based approach. Laws, subsidies, and payments for ecosystem services are essential, but they may not be sufficient if they fail to tap into people’s intrinsic motivations. Restoration, by nature, is a long-term and cooperative process: its success depends on trust, fairness, and shared commitment.

Second, the findings invite us to rethink the design of institutions for restoration. Ecological restoration lies at the intersection of public and private action. It creates benefits that are partly public (clean air, biodiversity, climate stability) but often requires interventions on private land. Effective governance must therefore blend public regulation, community participation, and private initiative.

Third, the experiment underscores the importance of narratives and framing. When people see restoration as an obligation to fix their past mistakes, they may feel discouraged or defensive. When they see it as a chance to create something new and valuable — a legacy for the future — they are more likely to participate enthusiastically. Policies that emphasize collective creation rather than individual guilt could therefore inspire broader engagement.

A human-centered vision of restoration

Ultimately, our study suggests that ecological restoration is not only an ecological or economic issue, but a deeply social one. Restoring ecosystems means rebuilding relationships — between people and nature, between past and future generations, and among members of a community.

In practical terms, this means that:

• Restoration programs should foster social recognition and moral ownership, not just financial incentives.
• Policymakers should involve diverse actors, including those not responsible for the damage, to create a sense of shared purpose.
• Communication should highlight the collective benefits of restoration — cleaner air, healthier soils, biodiversity, resilience — rather than focusing solely on costs or technical targets.

As we enter the decade of ecosystem restoration, the challenge is not only to mobilize resources, but also to cultivate the motivations that make restoration meaningful. Our experiment offers a small but concrete insight: when people feel part of a shared project, they are more likely to plant the forest of the future.

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Reference:

Cecchini Manara, V., Ciscato, E., Guarnieri, P., & Spadoni, L. (2025). Back to the Future: An Experiment on Ecological Restoration. Ecological Economics, 227, 108386. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108386