Hey everyone,

I will be evaluation a policy consisting on granting property rights to communities, in efforts to avoid deforestation. My analysis is mostly spatial for now, with my variable of interest being "deforestation". I have a large set of communities that participate in the policy, which started in the year 2000, and has been ongoing.
As communities joined in different years, (2000, 2001, 3, 7, 10,11 .. etc) a staggered diff in diff approach might prefferable. My data will be analysed at the grid level (as this allows for including all non-treaed areas which dont effectively have "borders" into my sample (are not demarcated communities).

A question I have is, if some years have very few communities joining the policy, so the model has a hard time calculating effects, for those years, how should I treat those communities within the staggered diff and diff approach?

Moreover, would 2-3 pre policy points suffice ? (given that these are of importance mostly for the early adopters of 2000, 2001.
I thank everyone in advance!