**3. Study area**

Study based on Ba Be District, Bac Kan province, a mountainous area located in the northern of Vietnam. Ba Be has 68,412 hectares in total, mean annual temperature ranges from 21.98 to 23.61°C, total sunshine hours in a year is around 1283–1577 hours, annual precipitation is from 1151.3 to 1699.2 mm, and the annual humidity is 85–86%. In 2019, the total population of this district was 47,415 persons, with an approximate

**Figure 1.** *Ba Be district— The area covered in this study shown on a map of Vietnam.*

population density of 70 persons per km<sup>2</sup> . There are four main ethnic groups living in this district: Tay, Dao, Kinh, and H'Mong groups. In comparison to other districts, Ba Be has slow economic growth, depends deeply on the agroforestry sector (taking 50% of total GDP), has a low annual income per capita (10 million VND per person), and high rate of poverty in comparison to the average rate of Vietnam (18.04% poor households in total) (**Figure 1**) [24].

Ba Be district has a large forest area of 68,412 hectares with forest coverage reaching 65%, especially in the district with Ba Be National Park which has high biodiversity and conservation value, so Ba Be receives interest and support from the State and many NGOs for forest conservation and development. Currently, in the district, there are many projects being implemented such as 3PAD, REDD+, UN-REDD, and so on. Since 2013, the PFES program has been implemented in Bac Kan province in general and in Ba Be district between Na Hang and Chiem Hoa hydropower plants and forest owners in Ba Be district. With the above conditions, it can be seen that the Ba Be district is an appropriate place to conduct research to evaluate the actual effectiveness of the PFES program in Vietnam.

### **4. Study methods**

#### **4.1 Study data sources**

The data used to evaluate the integrated effectiveness and analyze the actual impacts of the PFES program in Ba Be were collected from two specific sources as follows:


#### **4.2 Criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of the PFES program**

Vietnam's PFES policy toward sustainable development of three pillars in the forestry sector: economic, social and environmental fields [25]. On that basis, we have built a set of criteria to evaluate the combined effectiveness of PFES program with 15 indicators. In which the economic aspect was evaluated based on four indicators (symbols Ec1, Ec2, Ec3, and Ec4), the social aspect was evaluated through six indicators (symbols So1, So2, So3, So4, So5, and So6) and the environmental aspect was assessed in five indicators (symbol En1, En2, En3, En4, and En5) **(Table 1)**.

All these 15 criteria were synthesized and selected from the reality of the evaluation of PFES programs in the world and Vietnam. Specifically, four economic criteria (Ec1, Ec2, Ec3, and Ec4), 5 environmental criteria (En1, En2, En3, En4, and En5), and three social criteria (So1, So2, and So4) were used by the Vietnam Administration of Forestry during the evaluation of PFES programs [25]. Meanwhile, the remaining three social criteria (So3, So5, and So6) have been mentioned by scientists around the world when considering and evaluating PFES programs [26–28].

*Integrated Effect of the Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) in Vietnam DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112900*


#### **Table 1.**

*Criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of PFES program.*

#### **4.3 Evaluation of the integrated effectiveness the of PFES program**

#### *4.3.1 Scoring method*

The combined effectiveness of the PFES program was evaluated by the weighted scoring method. The efficiency of the PFES program will be divided into seven levels according to a 10-point scale, specifically as shown in **Table 2**.

The Integrated Effectiveness Score (IES) was calculated on the basis of three economic, social, and environmental dimensions according to the following formula:

$$\text{IES} = \text{EcS}^\* \,\text{W}\_{\text{Ec}} + \text{SoS}^\* \,\text{W}\_{\text{So}} + \text{EnS}^\* \,\text{W}\_{\text{En}} \tag{1}$$

In which:


The weights of economic, social, and environmental sectors are taken according to the following three scenarios:



**Table 2.**

*Integrated effectiveness rating scale of the PFES program.*

### *Integrated Effect of the Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) in Vietnam DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112900*

Analysis of scenarios contributes to the change in the overall effectiveness of the PFES program. On that basis, to flexibly adjust the activities of the PFES programs to suit the actual situation of the locality. This has important implications when applying the integrated efficiency assessment system of the PFES program in other localities in the future.

### *4.3.2 Calculation method for the EcS, SoS, and EnS*

Scores for each economic, social, and environmental aspect were calculated based on the evaluation indicator. The score of each aspect was divided equally among the evaluation indicators with equal weight. Specifically, the economic aspect has four indicators, so the maximum score for each indicator was 2.5 points; the social aspect has eight indicators so the maximum score of each indicator was 1.25 points; the environmental aspect has five indicators so the maximum score of each indicator was 2.0 points. The scoring of the indicators was based on the classification of the people and the actual results obtained from the PFES program (**Table 3**).

The basis for evaluating scores for each criterion was described in detail in **Table 4**.


#### **Table 3.**

*Scoring scale to assess the effectiveness of the PFES program.*


#### **Table 4.**

*Detailed description of the basis of classification of evaluation indicator.*

*Integrated Effect of the Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) in Vietnam DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112900*
