摘要
As companies increasingly rely on voluntary sustainability standards (VSS), especially certification programs, and payments for ecosystem services (PES) to support sustainability claims and comply with new regulations in global food and resource supply chains, there is an urgent need to understand their credibility. These tools depend on field-collected data to verify compliance, whether through field reports or geolocation information. Yet, much of this data is gathered on behalf of companies by actors, such as farmers’ cooperatives or local intermediaries, who, alongside producers, may stand to benefit from the appearance of compliance. We address a critical knowledge gap by assessing false reporting in the field verification reports of a shade tree planting program in Côte d’Ivoire that targets smallholder cocoa farmers and by testing the impact of a low-cost approach to reduce false reporting, which involves withholding information about the compliance parameter.