Conservation organizations often rely on incentive payments to private landowners to "buy" conservation benefits. In evaluating the efficiency of such programs, conservation biologists have often assumed contracts can be acquired at landowners' willingness-to-accept. Were this possible it would represent something of a best possible outcome for conservation from a negotiation with private landowners. Drawing on game theory, optimization methods and agent-based simulations, I will examine how conservation outcomes would be affected if landowners instead were to hold out for payments over and above their willingness-to-accept to gain some surplus from the transaction.