A scoping literature review

The European Commission is exploring the potential of a future nature credit market and adopted the communication “The roadmap towards nature credits” in July 2025. Given that such markets inherently operate within socio-economic-ecological contexts, efforts to develop nature credits would benefit from the explicit integration of behavioural insights. This scoping literature review synthesises academic and policy-practice evidence on stakeholder engagement in emerging nature credit markets, as well as other relevant policy instruments such as nature offsets, the voluntary carbon market and payment for ecosystem services schemes. It applies the COM-B behavioural framework to analyse how capability (C), opportunity (O) and motivation (M) shape behaviour (B) among demand-side actors, supply-side actors, public authorities and communities respectively. The findings show that motivation to participate in nature credit markets rarely concerns financial considerations alone and often does not translate into actual participation when structural conditions are misaligned. Key constraints include regulatory uncertainty, reputational risk, immature market infrastructure, high transaction costs and unclear risk allocation, which all increase perceived risk and stall engagement. There is broad agreement among demand- and supply actors, and policymakers on several key enabling conditions for nature credit markets, including stable and clear policy frameworks and the presence of trusted intermediaries.

VAN DER WAL Max; 

DUPOUX Marion;  BARREIRO HURLE Jesus;  BORRIELLO Antonio;  QUATRINI Simone; 

2026-04-27

Publications Office of the European Union

JRC146201

978-92-68-39207-2 (online),   

OP KJ-01-26-169-EN-N (online),   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC146201,   

10.2760/5705057 (online),