The research, led by Serah Kabui Kahuri and colleagues, focused on the Laisamis and Saku sub-counties, an ecologically diverse region of roughly 26,104 square kilometers within Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands. These rangelands are critical to the national economy: they cover more than 70 percent of Kenya, host most of the country’s national parks and reserves, and support over 75 percent of its cattle herds. Kenya’s pastoral sector is valued at approximately US$1.13 billion, with livestock accounting for 92 percent of that figure. Yet degradation continues through overgrazing, the spread of invasive species such as Acacia reficiens and Opuntia stricta, subdivision and fencing of land, and the erosion of traditional ecological governance.

Protection Motivation Theory, originally developed to explain protective health behavior, proposes that people act when they appraise both a threat and their capacity to cope with it. Threat appraisal combines perceived vulnerability and perceived severity, while coping appraisal includes self-efficacy, response efficacy, and response costs. The research team extended this framework by adding two constructs rarely tested in restoration studies: perceived political willingness, meaning pastoralists’ belief that the government genuinely prioritizes restoration, and perceived incentives, meaning the expected economic benefits from restoring degraded land. Reliability analysis confirmed that these constructs adequately captured the psychological, institutional, and economic dimensions of restoration behavior.

Collecting data from mobile pastoralist communities posed a methodological challenge. Because settlements shift spatially and temporally, the 2019 census could not serve as a reliable sampling frame. Instead, the researchers generated 10-metre-resolution land-use and land-cover change maps from fused Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery to identify settled areas, then validated potential homesteads through community consultations with local chiefs and key informants. A fixed allocation of 25 household representatives was drawn from each of seven administrative units, targeting 175 respondents. After 15 refusals and the exclusion of 38 questionnaires with substantial missing data or uniform response patterns, 122 valid observations remained for analysis.

The dependent variable, pro-environmental behavior, was measured on a five-point Likert scale covering actions such as rotational grazing, planting native grasses and trees, reducing livestock density, and investing in fencing, water management, or reseeding. Because extreme categories were sparse, responses were collapsed into three ordinal levels: weak, modest, and strong. Ordinal logistic regression models, estimated by maximum likelihood and validated against an ordered probit specification, assessed how the extended theory constructs influenced behavior. The Brant test confirmed that the proportional odds assumption held in all models.

The results were unambiguous. Response efficacy emerged as the strongest predictor of restoration participation, with a coefficient of 1.629, meaning pastoralists who believe restoration measures actually work are far more likely to engage. Perceived vulnerability followed at 1.203, then self-efficacy at 1.150 and perceived incentives at 0.811. Perceived political willingness also had a significant positive effect at 0.571. In contrast, response costs, the perceived expense, labor burden, and long time lag before benefits materialize, had a significant negative effect, with a coefficient of −0.911 in the baseline model. Notably, perceived severity and the rewards of continuing current practices showed no statistically significant relationship with restoration behavior.

The marginal effects sharpen the picture. A unit increase in response efficacy reduces the probability of weak pro-environmental behavior by roughly 0.109 percentage points while raising the probability of strong behavior by about 0.252 percentage points. A unit increase in response cost does the reverse, shifting pastoralists toward weaker engagement. Perceived incentives and political willingness similarly shift respondents up the behavioral scale. Overall, the study demonstrates that coping appraisal, beliefs about one’s ability and the effectiveness of the response, exerts a greater influence on restoration behavior than threat appraisal, suggesting that awareness campaigns alone are insufficient to trigger sustained action.

Demographic patterns added further nuance. Men constituted 66.4 percent of respondents, reflecting the male-dominated nature of pastoral activities in northern Kenya, though the substantial share of women participants signals a shift toward gender equity in pastoral labor, likely driven by male outmigration and livelihood diversification. Education was strikingly low, with 69.7 percent of respondents lacking formal schooling, and 72.1 percent earning below 5,000 Kenyan shillings monthly. These constraints matter: prior research has identified income limitations as the strongest predictor of non-adoption of restoration practices in arid Kenya, and low literacy complicates engagement with formal instruments such as Land Degradation Neutrality frameworks or payments for ecosystem services.

The significance of perceived political willingness points to the visible role of ongoing initiatives. Projects supported by UNDP and the Global Environment Facility have delivered in situ restoration, training, and in-kind inputs under the Nature and People as One RAMAT model, while The Restoration Initiative, running from 2018 to 2025, provided community capacity building, water-management works, and seeds. Since 2009, county governments and NGOs have also supported Environmental Management Committees responsible for sustainable woody-vegetation harvesting. Pastoralists who observe such tangible government commitment appear more willing to invest their own labor and resources in restoration, reinforcing a virtuous cycle of trust and participation.

The authors argue that their findings provide empirical support for the extended Protection Motivation Theory and carry direct policy implications for achieving Land Degradation Neutrality under Sustainable Development Goal indicator 15.3.1. Restoration policies, they contend, should strengthen local capacity through training and extension services, demonstrate the effectiveness of interventions via pilot sites and demonstration projects, provide appropriate financial and non-financial incentives such as input subsidies and payments for ecosystem services, and reinforce governance support alongside conventional awareness-raising. Because the analysis relies on cross-sectional data from a single pastoral context, the researchers caution that the findings identify associations rather than definitive causal relationships, and they recommend longitudinal designs, Bayesian approaches, and governance-extended structural equation modeling in future work, along with closer study of social networks, risk preferences, and customary institutions that shape collective restoration action.

Subject of Research: Psychological and institutional determinants of pastoralists' participation in rangeland restoration in Marsabit County, Kenya

Article Title: Determinants of pastoralists’ participation in rangeland restoration in Laisamis and Saku sub-counties, Marsabit County, Kenya

Article References: Kahuri, S. K., Kwakwa, P. A., Kumi, S., & Wireko-Gyebi, R. S. (2026). Determinants of pastoralists’ participation in rangeland restoration in Laisamis and Saku sub-counties, Marsabit County, Kenya. Frontiers in Environmental Economics, 5, Article 1861585. https://doi.org/10.3389/frevc.2026.1861585

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/frevc.2026.1861585

Keywords: rangeland restoration, pastoralism, Kenya, Protection Motivation Theory, land degradation neutrality, drylands, pro-environmental behavior, ordinal logistic regression, perceived incentives, political willingness, Marsabit County, SDG 15