This dissertation comprises three essays that study online demand coming from local offline markets. In the first essay, I study two social influence effects reflected in physical proximity and in demographic similarity, respectively, on online demand evolution. As these effects can be...

Social interactions in a community influence perceptions and values of members of the community. Recently Web 2.0 technologies have stimulated rapid growth of online communities, where communications between participants are made much easier. It is important to study how participants' behaviors...

While there is current interest in reorienting agricultural policy toward environmental and resource conservation goals, relatively little is known about the influence of cost on conservation adoption decisions or about how farmers combine multiple practices into an overall conservation package....

The small-scale pepper producers in the El Roble settlement Costa Rica face a monopsonistic market. Only one processing firm is buying the fresh pepper bunches. The processor has all bargaining power to decide on the price paid to the farmers and the quality selection criteria. The rejection...

Cooperative business firms are prevalent in agribusiness, yet no concise generalizedmodel exists to demonstrate how and why cooperative firms differ from, and may beselected over, the more common investor owned business firm. It is shown within ageneric transaction game that cooperatives fill...

Dramatic increases in concentration in the seed business, coupled with aggressive efforts to vertically integrate the agricultural sector and to institute contract-based production of commodities, have raised questions about the economic position of producers. Disparate positions of market power...

Using survey data from the community, producer marketing groups (PMGs) and farmhouseholds in Kenya, this paper investigates the potential of rural institutions (farmerorganizations, their rules and enforcement mechanisms) for remedying pervasive marketimperfections and facilitate access to new...

In many African countries, governments are re-thinking the role of the state in centrally providing certain goods and services. The rights and responsibilities for providing various public goods are being decentralized to lower levels of government administration, and/or being devolved directly...

During the past two decades, community-based hazard mitigation (CBHM) has been newly proposed and implemented as an alternative conceptual model for emergency management to deal with disasters comprehensively in order to curtail skyrocketing disaster losses. Local community members have been...

"A great challenge facing CPR enthusiasts today is understanding the conditions in which CPRs can be successful. Meeting this challenge requires understanding when and why individuals choose to create and maintain CPRs. Research in this domain often focuses on the relationship between individual...