Private organizations, public data: Land trust choices about mapping conservation easements

Land Use Policy 89 (2019) 104221

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Private organizations, public data: Land trust choices about mapping conservation easements

T

Adena R. Rissmana, , Amy W. Morrisb, Alexey Kalininc, Patrice A. Kohld,e, Dominic P. Parkerc, Owen Sellesa ⁎

a

Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA Environmental Studies Department, University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, USA c Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53711, USA d Nicholson School of Communication and Media, University of Central Florida, 12405 Aquarius Agora Dr. Orlando, FL, 32816-1344, USA e Department of Life Sciences Communications, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53711, USA b

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Keywords: Disclosure Geographic information systems (GIS) Information and communication technologies Land trusts Nongovernmental organizations Privacy Privately protected areas Transparency

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have fewer transparency requirements than governments, yet they increasingly shape land use and protected areas. Land information disclosure by NGOs can improve coordination and accountability, but create potential privacy concerns. We focus on decisions by land conservation NGOs (land trusts) to share digital maps of conservation easements on private lands. We asked which land trusts were more likely to contribute digital maps to public databases, and what benefits and concerns with disclosure did land trust staff report? Regressions from a census of 1138 and survey of 241 land trusts showed that organizations were more likely to share digital maps when they had larger budgets, a statewide sharing norm, regional collaborations, a strategic plan for new acquisitions, higher perceptions of map usefulness, and lower privacy concerns. Key informant interviews provided depth about beneficial map uses and privacy concerns. More land trusts would likely contribute to protected areas databases if mapping capacity increased, transparency norms were reinforced, map benefits better articulated, and privacy concerns were addressed.

1. Introduction Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) shape land use and protected areas, but they have fewer transparency requirements than government agencies. NGOs that conserve land are often called land trusts. Land trusts can hold conservation easements, an important land use policy tool for protecting open space, habitat, water quality, and working lands (Bengston et al., 2004). Conservation easements (hereafter, easements) are legal agreements between a landowner and a nonprofit land trust or government that restrict development and other land uses, typically in perpetuity and in exchange for payment or tax reduction (Byers and Ponte, 2005). Digital property maps in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have transformed land use and protected area planning and assessment (Andam et al., 2008; Theobald et al., 2000). Yet maps of easements and other privately protected areas remain incomplete even when they are public records (Rissman et al., 2017). Organizations’ choices about managing and sharing cadastral and other land information play a critical role in land use policy (Williamson, 2001). The increasing sophistication of technologies for

⁎

sharing data heighten opportunities and risks associated with public cadastral information (Solove, 2004). In this paper we examine land information transparency while focusing on land trust decisions to disclose digital maps of easements. Land trusts contribute to the international growth in privately protected areas (Bingham et al., 2017; Clements et al., 2018). Privately protected areas are owned or secured by non-governmental organizations, individuals, communities, or corporations (Stolton et al., 2014). Public access to digital maps of conserved land held by NGOs and other private entities has been slower to emerge than mapping of government protected areas (Baldwin and Leonard, 2015; Olmsted, 2011). Land trusts have grown rapidly since the 1980s due to tax deductions and public and private financing for easements on private lands (Merenlender et al., 2004; Parker and Thurman, 2018). Land trusts range from prominent, international organizations to local, all-volunteer groups. A land trust or government easement holder must monitor and enforce easement terms in perpetuity. The use of easements has faced scrutiny amid a series of scandals about whether easements are cost-effective and provide adequate public benefits or whether they

Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (A.R. Rissman).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.104221 Received 4 February 2019; Received in revised form 9 July 2019; Accepted 11 September 2019 0264-8377/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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provide impermissible benefits to landowners (Christensen, 2003; Looney, 2017a). Critics contend that some land trusts work with developers to exploit tax shelters and drive growth in federal tax deductions, which rose from $1.1 billion in 2012 to an estimated $4 to $6 billion in 2015 (Looney, 2017b). Private and public organizations have begun to create publicly-accessible digital maps of easements through digital map databases. In 2009, several organizations collaborated to create the National Conservation Easement Database (NCED) to provide a complete protected lands spatial dataset for the United States (U.S.), in coordination with the Protected Areas Database which tracks fully-owned (non-easement) protected lands in the U.S. These sources are included in the World Database of Protected Areas. Easements and other property records are publicly recorded, which is necessary for property valuation, taxation, and notification to future buyers. Due to logistical and technological challenges, however, NCED does not have the resources to compile digital maps of easements from public records and asks land trusts to voluntarily contribute digital maps of their easements (Rissman et al., 2017). Easements are an important example for transparency and accountability because they blend public and private governance, have perpetual land use restrictions, represent a large public investment, and are relied upon for public good provision and regulatory mitigation (Korngold, 2007; Owley, 2013). In the U. S., land trust easements have become popular during a time of low trust in government and a partisan divide about what role government should play in protecting the environment (Pew Research Center, 2015). Some landowners donate or sell easements to land trusts specifically because they are private organizations that often have private landowners on their boards of directors (Fairfax et al., 2005; Merenlender et al., 2004). Land trusts advertise themselves as a private alternative to government programs, although in many ways easements are not solely private (King and Fairfax, 2006). Land trusts have public obligations as charitable, taxexempt organizations. When they hold easements, land trusts take on a long-term role in oversight of private land use. When land trusts are unable to provide this oversight, it may fall to state attorneys general (McLaughlin, 2007). In some cases, easements held by land trusts are created as a result of regulatory requirements, such as Endangered Species Act or Clean Water Act mitigation (Owley, 2013). In addition, billions of public dollars are spent annually in the U.S. alone on easements through direct federal, state, and local grants and lost income, estate, and property tax revenue (Looney, 2017b; Parker and Thurman, 2018; U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2017). As NGOs, land trusts have fewer requirements than government programs about making information readily accessible to the public (Hale, 2013). The factors that influence organizations’ transparency choices are often examined among for-profit firms (Overdevest, 2005) but are less studied for environmental NGOs (Vaccaro and Madsen, 2009). NGOs are voluntary organizations that contribute to civil society (Katz, 1999) and are generally “self-governing and non-profit distributing, have some degree of voluntarism, and are expected to produce a public benefit” (Kramer, 1998). NGOs play increasing roles in policy implementation especially where policy networks become decentralized (Frederickson and Frederickson, 2006). The rapid global rise of NGOs, and the rare but prominent media scandals about NGO actions, have increased calls for greater public access to information on their activities (Gibelman and Gelman, 2001). Decisions about transparency hinge on “complex interactions between a variety of political and social actors, within sets of formal and informal rules” shaped by innovations in available technology (Meijer, 2013). For instance, land trusts may have different formal reporting requirements and expectations from foundation, government, and individual funders, including funding agencies that specify digital requirements for sharing GIS files or informal meals with donors to report on accomplishments. Transparency is “advocated as an important

ethical practice that should engender stakeholder trust and confidence” (Vaccaro and Madsen, 2009). While information release is a common goal in sustainability governance (Overdevest, 2005), there is heated debate over the advantages and disadvantages of transparency for trust, accountability, and democracy (Bannister and Connolly, 2011; Etzioni, 2010; Grimmelikhuijsen and Welch, 2012). Relationships between transparency and accountability depend on the definition of accountability. Accountability is often defined as account-giving or answerability, such as reporting about expenditures and performance (Dubnick, 2003), but account-giving provides only “thin” accountability. In contrast, “thick” accountability is defined as moral or ethical commitments reflected in standards, rules, and norms that impact one’s standing in a moral community (Dubnick and O’Kelly, 2005; Dubnick, 2003). Where thin and thick accountability diverge, transparent reporting is expected to be less complete and more fictional (Dubnick and O’Kelly, 2005). Scholars have examined land trust accountability and transparency to funders, donors, and the general public. This includes research on land trust reporting networks (Rissman and Smail, 2015), lack of public oversight of mitigation easements (Morris and Owley, 2014), state-level transparency requirements (Morris and Rissman, 2010), lack of watchful neighbors to report violations (King and Fairfax, 2006), and the growing privatization of environmental governance (Logan and Wekerle, 2008). Meanwhile land trusts depend on private landowners’ voluntary participation and face legal and political difficulties in enforcing restrictions on them (Cheever, 1995). Land trusts are accountable to private landowners for how they share information about them. Transparency contributes differently to thin and thick accountability to the public, funders, members, and landowners. Economic and sociopolitical theories of disclosure and institutional theory suggest numerous influences on disclosure decisions which can be applied to NGOs (Burger and Owens, 2010) and firms (Hahn et al., 2015). Economic theories suggest that organizations rationally weigh the benefits and costs of disclosure for profitability (Verrecchia, 1983). In the land trust context, this could mean that land trusts make strategic transparency decisions to accomplish their mission, which might be extended to the number, size, and location of easements they acquire. Sociopolitical theories, such as stakeholder theory and legitimacy theory, examine how pressure from stakeholders and the public influence organizations’ disclosure choices (Gray et al., 1995; Roberts, 1992). For instance, institutional investors have increased firms’ reporting of greenhouse gas emissions (Depoers et al., 2016). In the land trust context, advantages of transparency may include improved strategic action to accomplish their mission, accountability to donors and taxpayers, and coordination among organizations. Disadvantages may include reduced organizational or landowner privacy, risks to organizational reputation, and security concerns (Vaccaro and Madsen, 2009). Institutional theory examines how rules and norms influence organizational decisions. Organizational behavior tends to converge to become similar (called isomorphism) because organizations face normative expectations from peers and professional networks, mimic other successful organizations, and respond to requirements from funders or governments (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Isomorphism due to norms among peer organizations is likely to play an important role in land trust disclosure decisions. Building on this literature, we focus on the benefits, risks, and norms that may contribute to land trust decisions about whether to publicly disclose easement locations. We ask: 1) What characteristics are associated with transparency about land trust easement maps in a public database? 2) How have land trusts used publicly available digital maps of easements? 3) Why have some land trusts declined to contribute to a public database of easements? 2

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We examine these questions by interviewing and surveying land trust staff about their organizations’ transparency choices, perceived utility and use of maps, and reasons for not sharing their easement maps. We link responses to these questions with land trust attributes from the Land Trust Alliance Census and determine if land trusts have shared their data with the National Conservation Easement Database.

operates. The variable Budget (ln) is the natural log of total operating budget for the organization’s most recent year, from the LTA Census. Budget (ln) was highly correlated with number of paid staff (Pearson’s correlation coefficient 0.63), number of active volunteers (0.84) and number of members or financial contributors (0.84). Geographic area is a count of the number of states in which a land trust operates, from the LTA Census. Regional or national land trusts may be more likely than local land trusts to have GIS data.

2. Hypotheses and methods

Hypothesis 1a (Budget). Organizations with higher operating budgets were more likely to share spatial data.

2.1. Easement digital maps background Easements are held by most of the 1,700 land trusts in the U.S. (Land Trust Alliance, 2011) as well as several federal agencies and hundreds of local and state governments. Easements are typically held in perpetuity. Restrictions remain with the land when property is sold or otherwise changes hands. Easements likely represent a significant portion of current land conservation efforts (Cheever and Owley, 2016), yet access to the information regarding these properties is inconsistent. NCED is managed primarily by two NGOs, Ducks Unlimited and The Trust for Public Land. The database includes maps of conservation easements, reasons for the creation of each easement, date of easement establishment, holder type, and landowner type. Prior to NCED, there was no comprehensive national effort to map and track easements, though some states aggregated easement data and the Conservation Almanac (also managed by The Trust for Public Land) tracked and mapped public agency easements. An estimated 9.5 of 16.2 million hectares of easements lands have been mapped. However, 16.2 million hectares is a conservative estimate of the unknown total area under easement (NCED, 2015). NCED is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (NCED, 2019) unlike the Protected Areas Database for the U.S., which is housed in the U.S. Geological Survey. The location and terms of easements are public because they must be recorded in county offices with other property records, but this information is expensive and tedious to aggregate. In practice, maps of easements have traditionally varied in their accessibility to the public because they are held by thousands of organizations with different data-sharing policies, central records have been required by only a handful of state governments, and federal policies have not required centralized spatial records. Many land trusts lack digital records, and NCED has limited resources for digitizing easements, even when holders are willing to share them. Furthermore, many holders have not been contacted directly or repeatedly. Some land trusts and government agencies have declined to disclose records of their easements to NCED.

Hypothesis 1b (Geographic Area). Organizations with a larger geographic extent (operating in more U.S. states) were more likely to share spatial data. 2.2.2. Benefits of disclosure Organizations for which the benefits of public information sharing are perceived as higher than the risks of information sharing are more likely to share information, according to rational economic theories of disclosure (Verrecchia, 1983). Land conservation has public goods characteristics, such that the regional conservation benefits for each land trust depend on the total area conserved by all organizations (Albers et al., 2008). Spatial data and analysis can improve inter-organizational coordination and spatial targeting (Fitzsimons and Wescott, 2001). Many conservation goals, including preserving working forests and agriculture, protecting water quality, and providing access to long-distance recreational trails, require collaboration among multiple conservation organizations to achieve goals across large landscapes. Our proxies for the benefits of information disclosure include measures of land trust participation in regional collaborative initiatives, engagement in strategic planning, and perceived usefulness of maps. Collaboration is a categorical variable for whether land trusts participated in a landscape-scale collaboration, from the LTA Census. Strategic plan is a categorical variable for whether land trusts had a strategic plan that prioritizes areas for acquisition, from the LTA Census. We hypothesized that collaborative and strategic organizations were more likely to contribute to the shared database. Usefulness averages four Likert-type questions from the Map Survey on usefulness of a complete map of conservation easements for achieving conservation goals, preventing abuse of the easement tool, and contributing to their organization’s strategic planning. Hypothesis 2a (Collaboration). Organizations that participate in landscape-scale collaboration were more likely to contribute spatial data to NCED.

2.2. Hypotheses

Hypothesis 2b (Strategic Plan). Organizations with a strategic plan for prioritizing land conservation acquisitions were more likely to contribute spatial data to NCED.

Land trust decisions about transparency are likely influenced by a variety of factors. Previous research on predictors of disclosure decisions suggests the importance of organizational capacity, the perceived benefits and risks of information disclosure, and norms among similar organizations. We started with key informant interviews to identify important themes. We developed measures for land trust capacity, benefits and risks of transparency and social norms from the 2015 Land Trust Alliance (LTA) Census and our survey of land trusts conducted in 2016 (hereafter, Map Survey).

Hypothesis 2c (Usefulness). Organizations in which staff consider a complete map of conservation easements more useful for achieving conservation goals were more likely to contribute spatial data to NCED. 2.2.3. Risks of disclosure Privacy is highly valued by many private landowners (U.S. Forest Service), and the majority of easements are closed to public recreation (NCED, 2015). Organizational privacy may also be an important value for some NGOs. Land trusts market themselves to landowners as a private alternative to government conservation, even as they rely on public funding and tax incentives (Fairfax et al., 2005). As a result, land trusts should be attuned to the privacy concerns of land owners, and land trusts with greater privacy concerns should be less likely to share their map data. Our proxy measure of privacy concerns is a composite variable from our Map Survey related to perceptions about land trust and landowner privacy by land trust staff. Privacy concern averages

2.2.1. Capacity Larger NGOs are more likely to be transparent (Behn et al., 2010; Burger and Owens, 2010; Lang and Lundholm, 1993) which may be due to the higher capacity for information dissemination and the expectations of their funders. We expected higher capacity land trusts to be more likely to contribute to public map databases because they are more likely to have their easements already digitized in a GIS and to have the technical and financial capacity to manage and share digital maps. Our proxy measures of capacity are the log of the organization’s operational budget and the number of states in which the organization 3

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seven Likert-type questions from the Map Survey related to privacy and the risks from the lack of privacy for landowners and land trusts.

to NCED. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and key quotes were identified to represent common themes.

Hypothesis 3 (Privacy Concern). Organizations in which staff are highly concerned about landowner and organizational privacy and the risks of sharing data were less likely to contribute spatial data to NCED.

2.4. Survey and database matching methods We utilize survey data from two sources: the LTA Census and our Map Survey. LTA conducts a census of member land trusts every five years (Land Trust Alliance, 2011). LTA asks organizational staff to complete an extensive questionnaire on land trust characteristics including staff and budget capacity, land acquisitions, monitoring and stewardship, and a variety of other measures. The LTA Census is the most comprehensive information source on land trust characteristics. Our analysis focuses on the 933 LTA Census respondents that held easements To collect information on staff perspectives on the role of digital maps related to transparency, privacy, security, public right-to-know, data utility, and effects of data transparency, we conducted an online Map Survey of land trust and government agency easement holders between August 24 and September 23, 2016. Contact information for potential respondents was compiled using updated email lists derived from the NCED Communications Tracker records obtained from The Trust for Public Land. In NCED Communications Tracker, each organization was assigned two emails: a primary email and a back-up email. Emails without organizations were dropped. Emails that appeared ten times or more were assumed to be “data aggregators” rather than contacts associated with a particular organization and were excluded from the final list. Since there were often multiple emails for each organization, and a single email could appear across several organizations, emails with a server name similar to the organization’s name or website were prioritized. The final respondent list contained 2,319 invitation emails, including land trust and government staff, after removing duplicate and bounced emails. Respondents were sent four email reminders, one each week following the invitation, including the offer of being entered into a drawing for four $50 Cabela’s gift cards. Over 680 respondents opened the survey to read the instructions and 612 of these eventually continued on to take the survey for a response rate of 26%. Respondents who indicated their organization never held easements were directed to the end of the survey early, leaving 494 respondents. Of these, 315 respondents were from land trusts, while 179 were excluded from these analyses because they were from government agencies or tribal governments. Our analyses were conducted with 278 land trusts that responded to our survey and the LTA Census, and the 241 land trusts for which respondents completed all relevant questions in the survey. Nearly 70% of respondents completed the survey in 18 min or less. We developed the outcome variable of whether an organization contributed any digital maps to the National Conservation Easement Database by comparing land trusts in NCED with a larger list of land trusts from the LTA Census. We downloaded the NCED database in October 2016 and matched NCED organization names to the contact information provided in the NCED Communications Tracker database and organization names in the LTA Census. In the Map Survey, we asked respondents for the name of their organization to verify our matching of organization names and respondent emails. Where names differed slightly, we relied on webpages and headquarter cities to match organizations. NCED developers contacted all the Land Trust Alliance (LTA) member organizations who completed the LTA Census.

2.2.4. Norms around disclosure Institutional isomorphism suggests that organizations become similar to their peers because they are influenced by professional norms (normative isomorphism), mimic their peers to determine what behaviors are safe or acceptable (mimetic isomorphism), and are influenced by external factors (coercive isomorphism) (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Our proxy variable for social norms, Shared data norm, is the proportion of easement acres held by land trusts that contributed to NCED, for the states in which each land trust operates, calculated from LTA Census acres. A statewide land trust norm of contributing spatial data might also reduce risks to individual organizations, such as the risk that a landowner might work with an alternative land trust out of concern about sharing spatial data. We described the similarities in organizations’ disclosure decisions as norms due to our observations about the important role of state professional land trust networks in promoting or deemphasizing NCED contributions. Mimetic and coercive isomorphism may also play a role. Hypothesis 4 (Shared Data Norm). Organizations in states where a higher proportion of land trusts contribute data to NCED were more likely to contribute spatial data to NCED. 2.2.5. Control variables Given the inconsistent ways that organizations have been contacted and their data aggregated, organizations vary in the intentionality of a decision not to contribute to NCED, and staff respondents vary in their knowledge of these conversations. No NCED Experience controls for a respondent and organization’s level of experience with NCED. We expected a lower probability of NCED contribution for land trusts with mostly fee simple ownership (lands owned outright by the land trust), since these organizations are less focused on administering easements. Fee simple majority is a binary variable for whether the majority area of a land trust’s holdings are in fee simple. Working lands is a Likert-type question from the Map Survey that indicates how important working farms, ranches, or forests are for achieving the organization’s mission. Owners of working lands may be particularly concerned about privacy and trespassing, so land trusts focus on working lands preservation may be less willing to share spatial data. Hypothesis 5a (No NCED Experience). Organizations in which staff report that they have not been contacted by NCED were less likely to contribute spatial data to NCED. Hypothesis 5b (Fee Simple Majority). Organizations that are more focused on fee simple conservation were less likely to contribute spatial data to NCED. Hypothesis 5c (Working Lands). Organizations that are more focused on protecting working lands were less likely to contribute spatial data to NCED. 2.3. Interviews

2.5. Data summary

We conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 people who either help manage NCED, work for organizations that hold conservation easements, consult with land trusts, or represent private landowners in conservation. These interviews were conducted between September 2015 and June 2016 to inform survey development. Interview questions focused on why organizations contributed to NCED or not and what positive and negative impacts interviewees had observed related

Table 1 summarizes land trust attributes from the LTA Census for the full sample of 933 land trusts with easements, as well as for the 241 land trusts that responded to the Map Survey. We find that Map Survey respondents are on average higher capacity organizations with larger budgets, greater easement acreage, and were more likely to have shared their data with NCED. Using t-tests, we confirm that these differences 4

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0.43 118588.40 56.06 154.44 1.00 2919.00 7.00 19.00 0.76 27448.54 24.15 60.05

0.48

2.6. Statistical analysis We conducted regression analyses in STATA to examine whether LTA Census and Map Survey independent variables are correlated with land trusts’ choices to contribute to NCED. The land trust decision to contribute to NCED was estimated using logit and linear probability models. The estimation equation for the logit model is

0.49 176289.70 50.55 97.74

0.00 0.35

0.48

20.37 81.91 20.10

76.28

0.48 0.43 1.00 1.00 0.64 0.76 0.50 0.47

250.00 12.43 1.00 2308.96 12.26 1.75

14619.04 2.11 4.24

Median n = 241

7806.11 2.19 2.98

are statistically significant. Of the larger sample of LTA Census respondents (n = 933), 62% contributed to NCED, based on our matching of land trust names. In comparison, 76% of Map Survey respondents contributed to NCED (n = 241). Large standard deviations are apparent for some of the variables in Table 1, like Budget and Easement acres conserved. In these cases, the median variable values are an order of magnitude smaller, suggesting the data are right skewed with some very large capacity land trusts and a lot of smaller land trusts. We log transformed skewed variables for regression analysis. Table 2 presents descriptive statistics for our outcomes of interest from the Map Survey. Some variables are composites created by averaging responses to multiple survey questions. Table 2 lists the composite variables with survey questions and Cronbach alphas that indicate scale reliability.

0.62 18820.21 18.97 36.94 Indicator for trust being in NCED Total land conserved by trust in easement and fee simple Count of fee simple properties Count of easement properties

1.00 1528.00 5.00 10.00

0.37 Indicator for trust having more fee simple acres than easement acres

pi 1

pi

= Capacityi +

Benefitsi +

Risksi + Normsi +

Controli +

i

where pi is the probability of a land trust having contributed data to NCED and Capacity , Benefits , Risks, and Norms are sets of variables representing organizational capacity, benefits from sharing data, risks from sharing data, organizational norms and land trust specific controls. We estimate three variations of this model on the full sample of LTA land trusts and on the subset of Map Survey respondents. Model 1 includes the entire sample of land trusts from LTA Census, using only the variables from the LTA Census that proxy for capacity, benefits, and norms of transparency as predictors of NCED participation. The advantage of Model 1 is the large sample size. The limitation is that the direct measures of concerns about privacy and utility of maps cannot be used since they are only available for trusts that responded to the Map Survey. Model 2 restricts estimation to land trusts that responded to the Map Survey. Model 2 is estimated using only variables from the LTA Census to examine differences between the whole sample of LTA Census trusts and survey respondents. This model provides a check on whether estimation results from the survey sample are likely to be generalizable to the broader land trust community. If coefficient estimates across Models 1 and 2 have the same signs and orders of magnitude, our findings based on the survey sample should be generalizable. Model 3 includes survey respondents that answered all relevant survey questions in both the LTA Census and Map Survey. Estimation results were similar between the linear probability and logit models, so we only report the logit model marginal effects. We conducted model selection to minimize AIC. We examined correlation matrices as a check to ensure the models did not contain collinear variables. Finally, chi-squared tests compared the uses of digital maps between respondents who reported that they did or did not contribute to NCED. 3. Results

Control Fee simple majority Additional Information NCED match Area conserved total Fee simple count Conservation easement count

78.09 Percent of NGO easement acres held by trusts that are in NCED, in states where a given trust operates

0.00

82.71

0.46 0.66 Indicator for trust participation in regional collaboration initiatives Indicator for trust having a strategic conservation plan with priority areas

0.00 1.00

1079.36 11.55 1.40 Operating budget, thousands Natural log of operating budget Number of states a trust operates in

Capacity Budget Budget (ln) Geographic area Benefits Collaboration Strategic plan Norms Shared data norm

Mean n = 933

138.00 11.84 1.00

ln

Definition Variable

Table 1 Summary of LTA Census data for full and map survey sample of land trusts.

Median n = 933

Std. Dev. n = 933

Mean n = 241

Std. Dev. n = 241

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3.1. Factors that explain information disclosure Regression results revealed whether land trust capacity and the benefits, risks, and social norms surrounding the sharing of easement maps were associated with the decision to make easement maps publicly available (Table 3). In Model 1 (n = 933), organizations were more likely to have publicly available digital maps if they had larger budgets, if they operated in more states, if easements were a greater 5

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Table 2 Summary of Map Survey data. Variable

Definition

Mean n = 241

Median n = 241

Risks: Composite variable that averages responses to 7 questions on map survey about land owner and 3.38 3.43 Privacy concerns trust privacy. Cronbach's alpha=0.74 1 “Landowners are concerned about trespassers on their land” 2 “Privacy is an important value for landowners” 3 “Landowners have a right to privacy about how they use their land” 4 “It would put landowners at risk if everyone had maps of lands protected with conservation easements” 5 “My organization has a right to privacy about the locations of its conservation easements” 6 “My organization has a right to privacy about the purposes of its conservation easements” 7 “It would put my organization at risk if everyone could access digital maps of conservation easements” Benefits: Composite variable that averages responses to 7 questions on map survey about usefulness of 3.67 3.71 Usefulness maps. Cronbach’s alpha=0.74 1 “It would be useful for conservationists to have digital maps of all the lands protected with conservation easements” 2 “It would help achieve conservation goals if everyone could access digital maps of conservation easements” 3 “A complete digital map of conservation easements would help my organization plan strategically” 4 “A complete digital map of conservation easements would help prevent abuse of the easement tool” 5 “How useful would it be for your organization to have a complete digital map of all conservation easements in the regions where you work?” 6 “How frequently does your organization use digital maps of the conservation easements held by many organizations?” 7 “How familiar are you with digital maps of the conservation easements held by many organizations?” Control: Importance of working farms, ranches and forests to land trust: 1=not at all, 5=extremely 3.89 4.00 Working lands No NCED Indicator for perception that land trust has no experience with NCED 0.46 0.00 experience

Budget (ln) Geographic area Collaboration Strategic plan Shared data norm Fee simple majority Usefulness

Model 2: Map survey subset n = 241

Model 3: Map survey n = 241

0.0725*** (0.00978) 0.0290* (0.0160) 0.148*** (0.0384) 0.0240 (0.0385) 0.00621*** (0.000902) −0.170*** (0.0353)

0.0313** (0.0135) 0.0333 (0.0232) 0.118** (0.0549) 0.128** (0.0602) 0.00311*** (0.00107) −0.130** (0.0556)

0.0226 (0.0145) 0.0228 (0.0254) 0.0598 (0.0513) 0.134** (0.0666) 0.00341*** (0.000952) −0.0491 (0.0565) 0.0755** (0.0380) −0.0990*** (0.0374) 0.0643*** (0.0204) −0.202*** (0.0553) 213.6

Privacy concerns Working lands No NCED experience AIC

1053.8

236.6

0.68

0.64

1.21 0.50

sample, possibly leading to greater significance of the strategic plan variable in this sample. Model 3 (n = 241) reveals that organizations were more likely to have publicly available digital maps if Map Survey respondents thought a complete map of conservation easements would be highly useful and reported lower privacy concerns, also consistent with our predictions. Model 3, which includes variables from the Map Survey, shows the importance of a strategic plan and shared data norms, but other LTA Census variables became nonsignificant. Usefulness, a composite measure of the benefits of shared maps, was significantly associated with data sharing. As expected, privacy concern and no NCED experience were negatively correlated with data sharing. Land trusts that reported working lands conservation was more important were more likely to have publicly available digital maps. Land trusts with working land (farm, forest, grazing) easements that receive federal Farm Bill funding are required to provide location information to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Possibly, land trusts not doing working lands conservation are focused instead on wealthy estates or private preserves whose owners may have even greater concerns about map disclosure.

Table 3 Regression results show the variables associated with land trust participation in NCED. Model 1: All land trusts n = 933

Std. Dev. n = 241

3.2. Benefits of public maps Organizations reported a variety of uses of digital maps that compile easement locations from multiple conservation holders (Fig. 1). The top uses were for coordination with other organizations, strategic planning, engaging landowners and donors, telling the organization’s story, and advocating for conservation with policymakers. Less than half of respondents reported that their organization uses multi-organization maps such as NCED for monitoring easement properties, reporting to funders and members, enforcing easement terms, or fundraising. Staff from organizations that contributed to NCED were more likely to report using information for each of these purposes. Interview quotes (Table 4) reveal the context behind some common uses of multi-organizational digital maps and how the utility of the maps can hinge on their completeness.

Standard errors in parentheses. * p < 0.10. ** p < 0.05. *** p < 0.01.

proportion of their conserved lands, if they participated in regional collaborations, if they were located in states where sharing spatial data was a more common practice, and if they had a strategic plan, although this last finding was not statistically significant. These results aligned with our expectations. Model 2 (n = 241) shows similar results for the Map Survey subset of land trusts, suggesting that our findings based on the Map Survey sample should be more broadly generalizable. One exception is the larger coefficient on the strategic plan variable, which becomes a significant predictor of map data sharing in Model 2. A possible explanation is that the benefits to sharing data increase for higher capacity organizations with strategic plans and priority areas. Higher capacity organizations are over-represented in the Map Survey

3.3. Barriers and concerns about public maps For organizations that did not contribute to NCED, we asked staff to rate the importance of factors that might explain this decision to keep easement data internal (Fig. 2). The top reason reported was that the organization was not contacted to contribute. While NCED communication records indicate that each organization should have been 6

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Fig. 1. Uses of digital map databases of conservation easements, comparing staff responses from organizations that did and did not contribute to NCED.

contacted, that contact may have been years ago, staff may have turned over, the contact may have been through a regional aggregator rather than NCED, and the management of contacts has not been consistent over time. After that, the most common responses referred to capacity: other issues were higher priority, and capacity was limited for compiling, sharing, and digitizing easement records. About half of respondents reported that concerns about trespass on easement properties (58%) and landowner privacy (53%) were somewhat to extremely important factors in their decision to keep easement data internal. However, only 4% of staff reported that having easements mapped online has increased trespass on easement properties, from the 103 Map Survey respondents who contributed to NCED and answered this trespass question. About a quarter of respondents (24%) reported that organizational privacy was a somewhat to extremely important factor, while 15% said that concerns about external scrutiny were a somewhat to extremely important factor limiting information sharing. Many respondents mentioned other factors, including not being aware of NCED, contributing to other regional databases instead (perhaps unaware that those regional databases may feed into NCED), that the NCED interface was cumbersome or inaccessible, or that public knowledge of easement locations would lead to looting of cultural resources. Other reasons that interviewees occasionally gave for declining to participate in NCED included fear that conservation easement data could be used as a target for developers (because those properties may be undervalued on the market); prior agreements with landowners not to share locations; and power dynamics or competition among conservation organizations. Quotes from land trust staff and NCED developers who have worked closely with land trusts reveal the organizational, social, and political

contexts for sharing digital maps (Table 5). Local contexts vary considerably across the U.S. and contribute to land trusts’ information sharing decisions. 4. Discussion The increasing public availability of spatial data for private protected areas raises questions about the decisions NGOs make about disclosure. Half of land trusts have contributed digital maps of easements to NCED, which creates challenges for conservation planning and evaluation. Organizational choices to contribute spatial data to public datasets were correlated with organizational capacity; benefits such as collaboration, strategic planning, and perceptions of map usefulness; risks from privacy concerns; and norms of peer organizations. This is consistent with expectations from benefit-cost decisions and with norms as predicted by institutional theory. Across the U.S., maps of conservation easements vary in their accessibility to the public because they are held by thousands of organizations with different data-sharing policies. Although property records are public, only a handful of state governments require centralized records, and federal tax policies do not require centralized spatial records (Rissman et al., 2017). Lack of contact was the primary reason land trusts gave for not contributing digital maps to NCED. While NCED has been successful in compiling many conservation easement maps through coordinator nonprofit organizations (currently Ducks Unlimited and The Trust for Public Land) contacting many conservation easement holders, capacity remains a limitation. NCED funding for ongoing outreach and technical assistance with easement holders has

Table 4 Interview quotes illustrating beneficial uses of NCED. Uses

Quote

Enabling coordination and strategic planning

Making the case for conservation

Balancing benefits with concerns

“There’s quite a few players. It’s inconvenient to work in a county and find out there’s another land trust working 5 miles away.” (Land trust employee) “For a planning tool to be useful, you would want all the information there.” (NCED developer) “I use NCED to… support the all-volunteer and small staff land trust community. Understand who is operating with a high level of sophistication, who could use some support, and who really needs some intensive hands-on coaching.” (Land trust consultant) “The availability of more data showcases the role of private landowners in the conservation equation. …NCED is one tool to help start painting that picture.” (Land trust employee) “Mapping can help show protection of ecosystem services and historical preservation. In the case of an IRS [Internal Revenue Service] audit, it helps show why the easement has value. [NCED] demonstrates the significance of conservation.” (Land trust consultant) “It’s a difficult issue – we want the right people to be able to use the information and prevent the wrong people from using it, and that’s not possible.” (Land trust employee)

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Fig. 2. Reasons for nondisclosure to public map databases. Table 5 Interview quotes on concerns about sharing maps publicly. Reason

Quote

Concern about landowner privacy

“In the early years most of our easements were donated. Respect for privacy was very important. 95% of our easements are now publicly funded and a matter of public record anyway. Sometime down the road we’ll make all the information public, but we’re not there yet.” (Land trust employee) “Clearly the concern is about private landowners and their feelings about privacy which are kind of politicized. The property rights movement in Texas is very political. In all the western states there are organizations that make their living by spreading inaccuracies about environmentalism. One of the inaccuracies is that if you work with land trusts something bad might happen to you. Private landowners are very sensitive about others knowing what they do.” (Land trust employee) “It’s a minefield…for most people, especially outside the northeast, privacy is the number one factor. Dissemination can be more damaging than helpful.” (Private landowner representative) “Our brand started to be associated with public access. …People are going to associate public access with land protection and feel they’re entitled to it, and it can cause a lot of conflict with landowners.” (Land trust employee) “Political ramifications, I have heard in [one state], is that the general public believes that money toward protected lands should be open to the public – concern about trespass, so just do not make data public.” (NCED developer)

Concern about trespass or public pressure for recreation access

been limited. Many holders do not have digital records, and NCED has limited resources for digitizing easements. Furthermore, many holders have not been contacted directly or repeatedly, and prior NCED developers have faced some organizational continuity challenges. However, capacity is not the only barrier to complete maps. The benefits and concerns associated with sharing digital maps—and the implications of not having access to these data—depend on the broader sociopolitical context of actor interests. Many nonprofits and some government agencies declined to contribute records of their conservation easements to NCED even when the organizations already had their easements digitized, so capacity was not the issue in these cases. Among noncontributors to NCED, high-capacity organizations had greater privacy concerns than low-capacity land trusts. This suggests two main types of noncontributors: 1) low-capacity organizations with a range of privacy concerns and 2) high-capacity organizations with strong privacy concerns. Land trust concerns about landowner privacy and trespass on easement properties were important reasons for declining to contribute to NCED, based on descriptive survey results and interviews. Organizational privacy and landowner privacy were highly correlated, which was a surprise. One explanation is that land trust staff viewed landowner privacy as a component of organizational privacy, or that respondents’ own disposition toward privacy influenced their perspectives on landowner and organizational privacy. Land trusts that collaborated regionally and had strategic plans with priority conservation areas were more likely to contribute to NCED. It

makes sense that organizations with a direct use for these data are more likely to invest in collecting and sharing those data. Staff perceptions of the usefulness of maps compiled from multiple organizations was also a significant predictor of contributions to NCED. This may also be a measure of mapping capacity, since organizations need trained staff to get the most benefit from GIS maps. Land trusts reported the primary uses of multi-organization maps were for coordination, strategic planning, and making the case for conservation to policymakers. Many land trusts have been working over the past decade to improve their strategic spatial planning and move from an opportunistic to a targeted approach that weighs costs, benefits, and probability of gain over a counterfactual do-nothing strategy. Improved coordination can create tradeoffs between achieving local and regional optimal conservation outcomes (Bode et al., 2011). This study has several caveats. We received a lower response rate from NCED noncontributors and lower capacity organizations. However, NCED contribution was obtained from the NCED database itself and did not have to be estimated from the survey. Land trust employees who responded to the survey may or may not have been fully aware of the organization’s rationales for choosing to contribute or not contribute digital maps. Employees within a single organization are likely to have variable perspectives on privacy, security, data use, and landowner trespass, which may lead to weaker correlations than if we were able to obtain survey responses from multiple respondents in each organization. It would be interesting for future research to examine 8

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whether organizations’ investments in digital map technologies improved their strategic targeting. In practice, there is likely no one-size-fits-all form for promoting NGO transparency, and this likely applies to NGO transparency about land use policies. Scholars have called for “diversity in systems of transparency to maximize effects on societal trust” (Meijer, 2009). Some natural and cultural resources—critically endangered plant species or Native American petroglyphs that could easily be destroyed by vandals—are too sensitive and threatened for information about their locations to be made public. For the majority of properties, however, the trend toward greater public access to locational information is continuing, but as yet incomplete. Transparency plays a key role in accountability. Nonprofit accountability relates to “mission fidelity” and the provision of public benefits without allowing for impermissible private benefit or inurement (Hale, 2013). As the administrative state increasingly functions through dispersed networks with important roles for NGOs (Fredericksen and London, 2000), expectations of NGOs’ public transparency and accountability are increasing. Some commentators assert that because charitable non-profit organizations are supposed to provide public benefits, “the public has a right to know about charitable behavior and to demand a high degree of accountability” (Eisenberg, 2000). Many questions remain about to whom NGOs are accountable and what form of accounting is needed (Connolly and Hyndman, 2013). NGOs have “inordinate control over the flow of information” which can lead to low levels of funder control over performance information (Najam, 1996). This is particularly true when NGOs rely on voluntary charitable contributions, since there are fewer options for public oversight of the size and efficient targeting of tax revenue, in comparison with grants or contracts (Parker, 2005). Completing the NCED database will likely require a thickening of the ethical argument for NCED and clearer transparency with landowners about easement maps as public records. Information transparency has a complex relationship with accountability, since a perception of secrecy with funders or the general public could be delegitimizing, but so could a security breech that revealed landowners’ personal information. Edwards and Hulme suggest that NGOs’ weak accountability is related to the difficulties they face in “prioritizing and reconciling these multiple accountabilities” (Edwards and Hulme, 1996). Land trusts appear more likely to have a relationship of thin accountability to NCED, meaning account-giving or answerability without a moral status embedded in particular relationships (Dubnick and O’Kelly, 2005; Dubnick, 2003). In contrast, land trusts may be have a relationship of thick accountability to landowners, meaning that land trust choices impact their standing in landowners’ moral communities (). We attribute intentional nonreporting to divergence, or perceived risk of divergence, between land trusts’ thin accountability with NCED and thick accountability with landowners. We make a conceptual contribution to the organizational and governance literatures by linking thin and thick accountability to different types of transparency. Land trusts provide transparency through NCED to the public, other conservation organizations, and funders. Land trusts may also need to be transparent with landowners about the public nature of property records and their organizations’ policies on sharing easement information. Future research should examine the types of transparency that facilitate thin and thick accountability among environmental NGOs (Fox, 2007). Landowners play important roles as stakeholders in private-land conservation. Landowners can be patrons (providing donations and funding support), clients (beneficiaries on whose behalf the NGO works), and voluntary partners (agreeing to adopt easements). Landowners are also the individual and corporate land users whose behavior land trusts are responsible for monitoring and sanctioning. This tension in the relationship between land trusts and landowners contributes to the pressures on land trusts to not disclose information about private land use. In general, the public right to know about NGO activity does not necessarily extend to information about the individual

clients or landowners with whom an organization works. Likewise, NCED and other databases do not include landowner names. Easement locations are public knowledge, since they are recorded with the deed along with all other property records, although they have traditionally been time-consuming and expensive to access (Morris and Rissman, 2010). Expectations that easement locations will remain concealed may not be justified in the face of increasing technological capacity, information record coordination, and calls for land trust and public funding transparency. Land trusts should be clear with landowners up front about the potential for public knowledge about easements and other property records. This is consistent with the argument for transparent and fair reporting of privately protected areas to national and international databases (Clements et al., 2018). Maps have the power to shape understandings of what is and expectations for what should be (Wood, 2010). In the easement context, this is meaningful for the many organizations, individuals, and communities with a stake in private-land conservation over the long term. Broadly, maps contribute to reproducing culture, conveying social relationships tied to territory, and making resources more visible and controllable by governments and markets (Scott, 1998). While invisibility on maps is often described as disempowering, intentional invisibility can be an important power (Fyfe and Law, 1988; Wood, 2010). It is possible that invisible easements may be perceived simply as private lands with development potential, rather than as conserved lands for public benefits. We add maps to the “artifacts of accountability,” meaning the material representations of accountability relationships, that organizations produce, such as policies, contracts, websites, annual reports, and IRS 990 forms (Kraft and Wolf, 2018). Maps are a representation of accountability because they demonstrate action to funders, members, the general public, and oversight groups. Public accounting for the public investment in easements through grants, tax reductions, and regulatory mitigation would benefit from a complete easement dataset. We suggest several technical options for increasing land trust transparency for easements (Orman and Recinos, 2014). First, greater financial and technical capacity would improve map compilation, which could be generated through the support of foundations, government grants, and partnerships with universities. This would reduce the capacity barrier to contributions. Second, centralized records with limited public access could reduce privacy concerns. For instance, NCED features a “no download” option for easement holders to contribute data that will not be available for download; NCED could allow conservation practitioners and researchers to utilize the “no download” data subject to a memorandum of understanding that the data will not be reposted. This would likely alleviate landowner concerns about trespass and privacy while generating coordination and analysis benefits. Third, transparency could increase through changes to digital land parcel datasets. Easement existence and terms are part of local property records, and systems for integrating land parcel or cadastral data are becoming increasingly digital and public, although public records remain incomplete and gaining access to privately compiled cadastral records is very expensive (National Research Council, 2007). One mapping barrier is that even in states with public parcel data, conservation easements are often grouped with all other road and utility easements. Changes in parcel data attributes could differentiate conservation easements from other easements, as was done in California (Morris and Rissman, 2010). This approach could highlight a market logic for tracking easements to assist with property valuation, taxation, and resale to conservation-oriented landowners. Stakeholder accountability networks could be activated to encourage or require contributions of digital map information (Rissman and Smail, 2015). Land trusts have sought to build accountability and trust through land trust accreditation, which is a private, voluntary process that provides independent verification that land trusts meet standards and practices, but does not provide public transparency about conservation transactions such as maps of easement locations. One option for increasing the transparency of easements would be to include 9

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contributions to NCED as an accreditation preference or requirement. Another option would be easement transparency requirements for organizations receiving federal, state, and foundation grants. Changes could also be made to IRS requirements about tax deductions for easements to ensure they achieve a longstanding public benefit. New IRS requirements in particular are likely to be controversial and raise concerns about dampening landowner willingness to adopt easements. Greater attention is needed to the role of privately protected areas (Bingham et al., 2017, Mitchell et al. 2018). Mapping privately protected areas in regional and national maps and the World Database of Protected Areas provides further opportunities for coordination, planning, land use change assessment, and measuring progress toward meeting international targets. The database’s Protected Planet online mapping interface allows users to search by organizational name or location. It categorizes many land trust easements as Management Category V, a flexible protected landscape designation for areas managed for nature conservation along with agriculture, forestry, ecotourism, and other human uses. The database is used as a “business, conservation, and aid investment planning tool” and informs analyses of progress toward Aichi Biodiversity Targets and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals ([UNEP] United Nations Environment Program World Conservation Monitoring Centre & [IUCN] International Union for the Conservation of Nature, 2019). Critics of the World Database of Protected Areas have pointed to the history of maps as a tool of control by colonial governments and critiqued the database for ignoring local community and other NGO protected areas (West et al., 2006). Several programs are now mapping privately protected areas, such as the United Kingdom’s Putting Nature on the Map initiative (IUCN-NCUK International Union for the Conservation of Nature - National Committee for the United Kingdom, 2012). The role of global maps will hinge on the social context for protected area management.

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5. Conclusion Land trusts’ information disclosure choices are influenced by their assessment of direct benefits and risks of disclosure, as well as professional norms, which are shaped by sociopolitical contexts. Organizations were more likely to contribute when they were larger, had landscape collaborations or strategic plans, had more easements, and had lower privacy concerns. A robust analysis of land use policy would require access to complete data about the locations of easements and other privately protected areas, what those areas are intended to protect, and how they fit into the larger landscape of conservation and land use policy. Achieving a complete easement dataset requires additional capacity to digitize land trust holdings and maintain the database. It would also benefit from increasing land trust capacity to use maps for regional collaboration and strategic planning, deepening the professional norm for information sharing, and reducing landowner concerns about information disclosure. Acknowledgments We thank land trust staff and everyone who participated in this research. Funding was provided by the Knobloch Family Foundation, Trust for Public Land, U.S. Department of Agriculture Hatch grant WIS02000, and the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities. References Albers, H.J., Ando, A.W., Batz, M., 2008. Patterns of multi-agent land conservation: crowding in/out, agglomeration, and policy. Resour. Energy Econ. 30 (4), 492–508. Andam, K.S., Ferraro, P.J., Pfaff, A., Sanchez-Azofeifa, G.A., Robalino, J.A., 2008. Measuring the effectiveness of protected area networks in reducing deforestation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 105 (42), 16089–16094. Baldwin, R.F., Leonard, P.B., 2015. Interacting social and environmental predictors for the spatial distribution of conservation lands. PLoS One 10 (10), e0140540. Bannister, F., Connolly, R., 2011. The trouble with transparency: a critical review of

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