Leader and citizens participation for the environment: Experimental evidence from Eastern Europe

Tiziana Centofanti and Anand Murugesan

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2022, vol. 100, issue C

Abstract: We examine two aspects of decentralized governance by conducting lab-in-the-field experiments in five villages in Central and Eastern Europe. We experimentally test the effect of (1) democratically elected local leader’s endorsement and (2) citizen’s participation in the choice of environmental public goods (EPG) on their voluntary contributions. Our design ties the voluntary contributions in the experimental public good game to restoring a real EPG, such as a public park. We find that citizen participation in the endogenous choice of the EPG significantly increases contributions, while the leader’s endorsement does not. Our results suggest that while the leader’s effect is unclear, participatory decision-making can improve access to public goods and increase the beneficiaries’ willingness to cost-share in rural communities.

Keywords: Leaders; Participation; Public goods; Environment; Lab-in-the-field experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221480432200088X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:100:y:2022:i:c:s221480432200088x

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2022.101915

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().