How to increase landowners’ participation in land consolidation: Evidence from North Macedonia

Land consolidation is a well-proven land management instrument traditionally used for farm restructuring. A land consolidation project’s success depends to a large extent on the interest and willingness of landowners and communities to participate in the project. Here, local governments and responsible agencies can contribute to the higher motivation of landowners if the factors influencing the landowners' readiness to participate are known and appropriately addressed. Building on qualitative and quantitative data collected from landowners’ interviews in 10 municipalities in North Macedonia during 2019, this article provides insights into the individual factors influencing landowners’ readiness to participate in land consolidation and behavioural factors at both individual and social level determining negative attitude towards land consolidation. The article further identifies possible incentives, techniques, and nudges to increase landowners’ participation in land consolidation.Low economic interest, adversarial and non-cooperative attitude, lack of trust in institutions, fear of manipulation, and the belief that the process will be unjust, are the top subjective reasons landowners are not interested in participating in land consolidation. The regression analysis results revealed that the age of a landowner, plans to pass land to children, the sufficiency of information and the number of parcels forming a holding have a statistically significant relationship with the readiness to participate in land consolidation. • lack of economic interest undermines support to land consolidation. • lack of trust in institutions, fear of manipulation and injustice reduce the interest. • plans to pass land to children and sufficient information increase the interest. • operational techniques and nudges may persuade landowners to participate.