Collective action for watershed management: field experiments in Colombia and Kenya

Abstract

Edición, diseño de cubierta, preprensa y prensa digital: Proceditor ltda. Calle 1C No. 27 A -01 Bogotá, D. C., Colombia Teléfonos: 2204275, 220 4276, Fax: extensión 102 proceditor@etb.net.co Impreso en Colombia -Printed in ColombiaEl contenido de la presente publicación se encuentra protegido por las normas internacionales y nacionales vigentes sobre propiedad intelectual, por tanto su utilización, reproducción, comunicación pública, transformación, distribución, alquiler, préstamo público e importación, total o parcial, en todo o en parte, en formato impreso, digital o en cualquier formato conocido o por conocer, se encuentran prohibidos, y sólo serán lícitos en la medida en que se cuente con la autorización previa y expresa por escrito del autor o titular. Las limitaciones y excepciones al Derecho de Autor, sólo serán aplicables en la medida en que se den dentro de los denominados Usos Honrados (Fair use), estén previa y expresamente establecidas; no causen un grave e injustificado perjuicio a los intereses legítimos del autor o titular, y no atenten contra la normal explotación de la obra. ABSTRACTThe dilemma of collective action around water use and management involves solving both the problems of provision and appropriation. Cooperation in the provision can be affected by the rival nature of the appropriation and the asymmetries in the access. We report two field experiments conducted in Colombia and Kenya. The Irrigation Game was used to explore the provision and appropriation decisions under asymmetric or sequential appropriation, complemented with a Voluntary Contribution Mechanism experiment which looks at provision decisions under symmetric appropriation. The overall results were consistent with the patterns of previous studies: the zero contribution hypotheses is rejected whereas the most effective institution to increase cooperation was face-to-face communication, and above external regulations, although we find that communication works much more effectively in Colombia. We also find that the asymmetric appropriation did reduce cooperation, though the magnitude of the social loss and the effectiveness of alternative institutional options varied across sites. C E D E Centro de Estudios sobre Desarrollo Económico 2 ACCIÓN COLECTIVA PARA EL MANEJO DE CUENCAS: EXPERIMENTOS EN CAMPO EN COLOMBIA Y KENIA RESUMENEl dilema de la acción colectiva alrededor del uso y manejo del agua implica resolver tanto los problemas de provisión del recurso como de apropiación del mismo. La cooperación en la provisión puede verse afectada por la rivalidad en la apropiación y las asimetrías en el acceso. Es este documento presentamos dos experimentos llevados a cabo en Colombia y Kenia. El Juego de la Irrigación fue usado para explorar las decisiones de provisión y apropiación, bajo unas condiciones de apropiación asimétricas o secuenciales, complementado con el experimento de bienes públicos (Voluntary Contribution Mechanism) el cual se enfoca en las decisiones de provisión bajo condiciones de apropiación simétricas. Los r...

The Opportunity Costs of Conservation with Deterministic and Probabilistic Degradation Externalities

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“…This is consistent with the findings of Kimbrough and Vostroknutov (2015) in a lab experiment using students. Similar studies which found exhaustion of resources under different growth treatments include the Forestry Game by Cardenas et al (2011), andBru et al (2003).…”

“…Some important aspects covered in previous studies include the effects of economic and social heterogeneities (Taylor and Singleton 1993;Agrawal 1998;Varughese and Ostrom 1998;Kimbrough and Vostroknutov 2015), subjective satisfaction on the CPR games over standard measures of objective behavior of players (Becchetti et al 2016), impatience and cooperation (Schlager and Heikkila 2009), asymmetry in field experiments on CPR problems (Fehr and Leibbrandt 2011;Cardenas et al 2011;Janssen et al 2011), the influence of different institutional arrangement on CPR extraction (Cardenas and Ostrom, 2004;Rodriguez-Sickert et al 2008;Cardenas et al 2011), culture and ecology on cooperation (Sebastian et al 2011), social norms and ecological variables on cooperation and sustainable management of CPRs (Ostrom 2009;Lo 2013;Kimbrough and Vostroknutov 2015).…”

A Multi-Tier Social-Ecological System Analysis of Protected Areas Co-Management in Belize

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