Social Norms and Behavior in the Local Commons as Seen Through the Lens of Field Experiments

Cárdenas, Juan Camilo

doi:10.1007/s10640-010-9452-8

Cited by 73 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…The only variable consistently significant across the three models is attends water meetings, implying if the respondent attended water meetings they were more likely to have experienced past conflict and expect to experience future conflict and future physical violent conflict. This result appears contradictory to the findings of past studies on informal mechanisms for resource management, attending meetings shares a positive relationship with conflict [35,56,57]. These studies showed that when communication or positive informal rules and social norms were present, more socially optimal outcomes were achieved.…”

Section: Independent Variables Used In the Modelcontrasting

confidence: 85%

“…The specification of water as the source of the dispute explores directly whether water is observed as a source of friction. Despite less than two percent of respondents naming water as a source of conflict (see Figure 4), 57.6% reported observing a dispute over water. Perceptions of future water disputes can also indicate respondent's sense and expectation of water security.…”

Section: Independent Variables Used In the Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Farmer Perceptions of Conflict Related to Water in Zambia

Marcantonio

Attari

2018

Sustainability

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Abstract:The relationship between climate change, water scarcity, and conflict is still debated. Much of the existing work relating resource scarcity to conflict has involved regional-scale analysis linking instances of violent outbreaks to environmental conditions. But how do individual farmers in Africa define conflict? Do they perceive that conflict will change as a function of water scarcity, and, if so, how? Here, we address these questions by surveying farmers in southern Zambia in 2015, where we asked respondents to define conflict, assessed their perceptions of past and future conflict, as well as perceptions of rainfall and water availability. We find that the majority of our respondents (75%) think of conflict as misunderstandings or disagreements between people and that 91% of our sample has experienced past conflict, 70% expect to experience future conflict, and 58% expect to experience future physical violent conflict. When asked about the sources of conflict, respondents mainly mention land grabbing, crop damage by animals, and politics rather than water related issues. However, we find a significant relationship between perceptions of future rainfall decreasing and future physical violent conflict. These results imply that even though respondents do not think water scarcity is a direct source of conflict, the perception of decreased rain in the future is significantly related to the perception that future conflict and future physical violent conflict will occur.

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Section: Independent Variables Used In the Modelcontrasting

confidence: 85%

Section: Independent Variables Used In the Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Farmer Perceptions of Conflict Related to Water in Zambia

Marcantonio

Attari

2018

Sustainability

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“…In particular, economic field experiments with users who share a real natural resource have increased our knowledge regarding how they make decisions and self-organize to extract those resources in a sustainable way (Cárdenas, 2000(Cárdenas, , 2011Cárdenas and Carpenter, 2008;Cárdenas and Ostrom, 2004;Janssen and Anderies, 2011;Muradian and Cárdenas, 2015;Ostrom, 2006), thus avoiding the circumstance of being trapped in the "tragedy of the commons" (Hardin, 1968).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

External validity of artefactual field experiments: A study on cooperation, impatience and sustainability in an artisanal fishery in Colombia

Torres-Guevara

Schlüter

2016

Ecological Economics

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This paper contributes to the experimental analysis of sustainable behavior in artisanal fisheries and the external validity of economic experiments. We run a standard one-shot public goods experiment and two time preferences experiments with fishermen from Tasajera. It is a small fishing community located in the Caribbean coast of Colombia, which depends mainly on the fishery resources of the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta for its livelihood. To investigate the external validity of the experiments, we related the fishermen's individual decisions in the experiments to some indices measuring the ecological impact of fishing activities among the same group of fishermen. We found that fishermen's contributions to the public good and their levels of impatience are not robustly correlated to their real fishing behavior. We argue that the link between fishermen's behavior in the field experiments and real life could be associated to various factors, such as the specific context in which fishermen live, and the way in which cooperation in real life is measured.

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“…Common pool resource (CPR) experiments using subjects who share a real natural resource, e.g., an artisanal fishery, have provided valuable insights in particular (Cárdenas 2003, 2004, 2009, 2011Cárdenas and Ostrom 2004, Rodríguez-Sickert et al 2008. Because the subjects, e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring External Validity of Common Pool Resource Experiments: Insights from Artisanal Benthic Fisheries in Chile

Gelcich¹,

Guzmán²,

Rodríguez-Sickert³

et al. 2013

E&S

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ABSTRACT. We explore the external validity of a common pool resource (CPR) laboratory experiment. The experimental subjects were artisanal fishers who exploit benthic resources on the coast of Chile. A first set of subjects was recruited from fishers' unions that comanage their resources through territorial user right areas. These unions differ in their performance, which is largely the outcome of the cooperative efforts of their members. A second set of subjects was recruited among nonunionized fishers who do not participate in the comanagement system. They fish exclusively in open-access areas and barely cooperate in their fishing. Membership of a union and the union's performance in comanagement were related to the subjects' behavior in the laboratory. In the CPR experiment, members of high-performance unions showed high cooperation with each other, while members of low-performance unions cooperated significantly less. Nonunionized fishers did not cooperate at all. We also explored how the weak external enforcement of an individual quota can trigger changes in behavior, what we refer to as internalizing the norm. Only the members of high-performance unions internalized the norm. They refrained from overfishing until the end of the game, even though the sanction for exceeding the quota was not strong enough to be dissuasive from the point of view of pure self-interest. This study provided insight on the experimental analysis of cooperation in artisanal fisheries and suggested that the capacity to internalize norms is important to the sustainable exploitation of artisanal fisheries common pool resources.RESUMEN. Exploramos la validez externa de un experimento de laboratorio con un recurso de uso común. Los sujetos del experimento han sido pescadores artesanales que explotan recursos bentónico en la costa de Chile. Un primer grupo de personas proviene de organizaciones de pescadores que utilizan sistemas de co-manejo explotando estos recursos a través de derechos territoriales de uso. Un segundo grupo de pescadores incluidos en este experimento no pertenecían a organizaciones de pescadores y tampoco participaban en sistemas de co-manejo, pescando de forma exclusiva bajo un régimen de acceso abierto y rara vez cooperan entre ellos. Este trabajo realiza un análisis comparativo entre el desempeño en co-manejo entre estas diferentes organizaciones de pescadores y el comportamiento colaborativo de los pescadores. Los resultados indican que los pescadores miembros de organizaciones con elevado desempeño presentan un alto grado de cooperación entre ellos, mientras que aquellos donde se observa bajo desempeño su nivel de cooperación es también significativamente más reducido. El trabajo también demuestra que los pescadores que no forman parte de organizaciones de pescadores tampoco mostraron ningún tipo de cooperación. Asimismo, tamibén investigamos cómo un débil cumplimiento externo de la normativa en relación a las cuotas de capturas puede provocar cambios en el comportamiento de los pescadores, entendido aquí como in...

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Social Norms and Behavior in the Local Commons as Seen Through the Lens of Field Experiments

Abstract: Laboratory and field experiments, Common-pool resources, Collective action, Regulations, Social norms, C93, D01, H39, H41, Q2, Q56, Q57,

Cited by 73 publications

References 56 publications

Farmer Perceptions of Conflict Related to Water in Zambia

Farmer Perceptions of Conflict Related to Water in Zambia

External validity of artefactual field experiments: A study on cooperation, impatience and sustainability in an artisanal fishery in Colombia

Exploring External Validity of Common Pool Resource Experiments: Insights from Artisanal Benthic Fisheries in Chile

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