Abstract : Environmental protection is everyone’s responsibility but who will ultimately bear the burden? Environmental intervention protection program usually involves stakeholders in order to facilitate its mechanism to conserve the ecosystem. The principle payment for ecosystem services posits that upland dwellers (farmers) will be compensated to shift from its traditional land use practice to sustainable farming technology. The compensation however will be from lowland ecosystem beneficiaries (water users). This paper aimed to determine if the compensation or incentive provided will affect upland farmer’s participation in payment for ecosystem services (PES) program as an additional source of income. Social and human capital, farm characteristics and environmental awareness and membership in organization were subject to multinomial logit regression. The analyses show that neither land tenure, agroecosystem, offered bid amount and off farm income predicts the willingness to accept land use change among upland farmers. Apparently, upland farmers where majority are living below the poverty threshold are the ones bearing the brunt of the environmental protection activity while receiving less than there supposed monetary incentives based on ecosystem value. Nevertheless, awareness as ecosystem service provider appears to be significant predictor in enrolling to the program. Hence upland farmers should always be involved in planning for environmental management and protection.