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

Juan-Camilo Cardenas

No 6650, Documentos CEDE from Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE

Abstract: Behavior in the local commons is usually embedded in a context of regulations and social norms that the group of users face. Such norms and rules affect how individuals value material and non-material incentives and therefore determine their decision to cooperate or over extract the resources from the common-pool. This paper discusses the importance of social norms in shaping behavior in the commons through the lens of experiments, and in particular experiments conducted in the field with people that usually face these social dilemmas in their daily life. Through a large sample of experimental sessions with around one thousand people between villagers and students, I test some hypothesis about behavior in the commons when regulations and social norms constrain the choices of people. The results suggest that people evaluate several components of the intrinsic and material motivations in their decision to cooperate. While responding in the expected direction to a imperfectly monitored fine on over extraction, the expected cost of the regulation is not a sufficient explanatory factor for the changes in behavior by the participants in the experiments. Even with zero cost of violations, people can respond positively to an external regulator that issues a normative statement about a rule that is aimed at solving the social dilemma.

Keywords: Key words: social norms; regulations; cooperation; collective action; common-pool resources; experiemental economics; field experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C9 D71 H3 H4 Q0 Q2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28
Date: 2009-11-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-hpe and nep-soc
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https://repositorio.uniandes.edu.co/bitstream/handle/1992/8144/dcede2009-27.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Social Norms and Behavior in the Local Commons Through the Lens of Field Experiments (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:col:000089:006650

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