Institute of the Environment 2023-2024 Environmental and Climate Justice Graduate Scholar Marie Fleming is the lead author of a recent publication, Impact of Price Shocks and Payments on Crop Diversification and Forest Use Among Malagasy Vanilla Farmers. Fleming was awarded $5000 as an Environmental and Climate Justice Scholar. 

Marie’s research consisted of developing a discrete choice experiment and an innovative experimental tablet-based game to predict the effects of price shocks and payment incentives on vanilla farmers’ willingness to diversify their crops and support forest conservation in northeast Madagascar. The group found that farmers highly valued vanilla mono-crops and were indifferent to diversified vanilla agroforestry. 

The findings shed light on the importance of market dynamics and payment schemes in encouraging pro-conservation behavior and crop diversification among farmers reliant on cash crops such as vanilla. The work demonstrates how games can provide a low-risk, low-cost tool to predict the impacts of policy interventions.

Read the publication at the link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320724004774?dgcid=coauthor

Read Marie’s blog post about the project: http://www.mcfleming.org/blog