We adopt a mixed methods approach to investigate whether and how heterogeneity in individual returns to a public good affects contributions. We engage smallholder farmers in Sri Lanka in: a one-shot, framed, lab-in-the-field experiment, within which the farmers' rates of return to the public...

This paper focuses on the relationship between public action and access to public goods. It begins by developing a simple model to capture the various mechanisms that are discussed in the theoretical literature on collective action. We use the model to illustrate the special assumptions embedded...

We test whether a descriptive norm-nudge is a suitable policy tool to increase cooperation in a social dilemma when decisions are taken by teams, not individuals. 10 Each team in our experiment comes from a different fishing boat at Lake Victoria, Tanzania. The provision of a norm-nudge is...

Since Mancur Olson's "Logic of collective action" it is common conviction in social sciences that in large groups the prospects of a successful organization of collective actions are rather bad. Following Olson's logic, the impact of an individual's costly contribution becomes smaller if the...