We investigated the importance of the social context for people’s voluntary contributions to a national park in Costa Rica, using a natural field experiment. Some subjects make actual contributions while others state their hypothetical contribution. Both the degree of anonymity and information...

We investigated the role of anonymity, reciprocity, and conformity for voluntary contributions, based on a natural field experiment conducted at a national park in Costa Rica. Contributions made in public in front of the solicitor were 25 percent higher than contributions made in private. Giving...

This paper analyzes optimal social discount rates where people derive utility from relative consumption. We identify and compare three separate discount rates -- the social rate (taking positional externalities into account), the private rate, and the conventional Ramsey rate. Two main findings...

From 1997 to 2005, an astonishing 5,200 million USD was invested to reduce cocaine production in Colombia, the world's main cocaine producer. However, little is known about the effectiveness of policies targeting coca cultivation. This paper uses a surveybased experiment to evaluate the effects...

Although in-situ conservation is increasingly considered an efficient way of conserving plant genetic resources, little is known about the incentives and constraints that govern conservation decisions among small farm holders in developing countries. Using a choice experiment approach, we...

Various decentralization experiments are currently underway in the Chinese forestry sector. However, a key question often ignored by researchers and policymakers addresses what farmers really want from reform. This paper uses a survey-based choice experiment to investigate farmers’ preferences...

This paper examines the concern for relative standing among rural households in China. We used a survey-experimental method to measure to what extent poor Chinese farmers care about their relative income and found that the respondents cared to a high degree. Compared to previous studies in...

Unique survey data from a contingent valuation study conducted in three different countries (China, Sweden, and the United States) were used to investigate the ordinary citizen’s willingness to pay (WTP) for reducing CO2 emissions. We found that a large majority of the respondents in all three...

The risk of losing income and productive means due to adverse weather can differ significantly among farmers sharing a productive landscape and is, of course, hard to estimate or even “guesstimate” empirically. Moreover, the costs associated with investments in adaptation to climate are...

Studies have shown that there are differences in cooperative behavior across countries. Furthermore, differences in the use of and the reaction to the introduction of a norm enforcement mechanism have recently been documented in cross-cultural studies. We present data that prove that stark...