Incentivising coastal wetland restoration: What factors influence private landholder participation in Australia?

Coastal wetlands, such as salt marshes, mangrove, and seagrass meadows, store large amounts of 'blue carbon', making their conservation and restoration a valuable climate-mitigation strategy. Scaling coastal wetland restoration as a nature-based solution in Australia hinges on the cooperation of private landholders, who own much of the land with restoration potential. This research closes a critical gap in understanding how private landholders weigh monetary versus non-monetary factors when deciding whether to restore and permanently protect wetlands on their properties. We surveyed coastal landholders nation-wide and ran a discrete-choice experiment to quantify the financial incentives and programme features most likely to incentivise wetland restoration and conservation. Choice data were analysed with random-parameter logit, latent-class, and hurdle models, while qualitative survey responses corroborated and contextualised model outputs. Our findings show that private landholders are generally interested in coastal wetland restoration but reluctant to participate in permanent restoration programs. Many can be enticed, provided the payment is sufficiently high in the context of current land values. Non-monetary elements also matter: programmes that minimise transaction costs through administrative assistance and program-assisted wetland maintenance receive higher stated participation rates, as do publicly funded programs and programs offering up-front payments. By quantifying the relative importance of these factors for private landholders, this study offers actionable guidance for designing, funding, and administering blue-carbon incentive programmes in Australia and comparable contexts. It also provides methodological insights for conducting stated-preference research with small, heterogeneous target groups.