Classification of Instruments
A broad variety of policy and planning instruments is available to pursue environmental objectives in (agricultural) land use and landscape management. Those instruments can be classified into three categories: (i) regulations ("sticks"), (ii) market intervention ("carrots") and (iii) information ("sermons") (see Fig. 1). Regulations, steering intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, are formulated to prohibit or restrain unwanted actions and developments through negative sanctions and penalties. They can also be interpreted as authoritative instruments. Allocative market intervention measures are to influence economic decision-making and aim at encouraging actions through (positive or negative) economic incentives, such as rewards, grants, fiscal exemptions or facilitative measures. Information instruments, like communicative, intellectual and moral appeals addressing intrinsic decision-making include persuasion, information and knowledge transfer, but also social non-monetary sanctioning to encourage wanted and discourage unwanted actions.
