Public participation and willingness to cooperate in common-pool resourcemanagement: A field experiment with fishing communities in Brazil
Carina Cavalcanti a,b,⁎, Felix Schläpfer a,b, Bernhard Schmid a
a Institute of Environmental Sciences, University of Zurich, Switzerlandb Institute for Environmental Decisions, Federal Institute of Technology ETH, Zurich, Switzerland
⁎ Corresponding author. Institute for EnvironmentalTechnology ETH, CHN K 77, Universitätstrasse 22, 809244 632 61110.
Article history:Received 7 April 2009Received in revised form 19 August 2009Accepted 22 September 2009Available online 26 October 2009
Keywords:DeliberationParticipationWillingness to contributeBeliefsFishing resourcesField experiment
The primary evidence about the factors determining successful self-governance of common-pool resources(CPR) has come from case studies. More recently, this observational evidence has been complemented byinsights from economic experiments. Here we advance a third approach in which the role of localdeliberation about the management of a fishery resource is investigated in a field experiment. Using threecontrol and three treatment communities in a freshwater fishery, we tested whether participation indeveloping specific measures for community-based sustainable CPR management increased the willingnessto contribute to the implementation of these measures. Each community was also exposed to informationabout their community leaders' advice about the proposed measures. Both participation and leader adviceaffected the willingness of participants to contribute in one of three proposed measures. However, thestrongest influence on individual willingness to contribute was exerted by the individual beliefs about thecooperation of others in CPR management.
Decisions, Federal Institute ofZurich, Switzerland. Fax: +41
Common-pool resources (CPR) are defined as natural or man-made resources in which (a) exclusion of users is nontrivial (but notnecessarily impossible) and (b) resource use by one user decreasesthe availability of the resource for other users (Ostrom et al., 1992). Atleast since Gordon (1954), it has been known that individuals jointlyusing a CPR have incentives to ignore the external harm they imposeon others, leading to outcomes that are not rational from the per-spective of the group. Garrett Hardin (1968) argued that the users ofcommon resources are trapped in an inevitable dilemma that leads tothe destruction of the resources on which they depend. Policy pro-posals for resolving CPR dilemmas often follow one of twoalternatives. The first approach is to use a governmental organizationto impose fines or other forms of sanctioning to restrain people fromextracting the common resource. The second approach solves thedilemma by privatization, that is, by defining property rights thattransform a common resource into a private one.
Both approaches can be difficult to implement. In many cases,governmental intervention is prohibitively expensive. Especially insettingswhere the common resources are spread over large and remoteareas, sufficient monitoring is impossible with limited resources, asituation oftenencountered in developing countries. Furthermore, there
are numerous examples where governmental intervention has failed(e.g. IUCN, 1999) because common resource users did not perceive theintrusion of external agents as legitimate and therefore did not followthe imposed rules (Anderies et al., 2004). Privatization, however, doesnot solve the dilemma in the case of migratory resources (Clark, 1990)and raises difficult questions concerning the division of the propertyrights (Baland and Platteau, 1998).
A growing body of research suggests self-governance by local usergroups as an alternative to the two standard approaches. There isconsiderable evidence that self-governance by local users can besuccessful (Acheson, 1975; Cordell, 1989; Ostrom, 1990; Ostrom andGardner, 1993; Begossi, 1995; Leal, 1998; Ostrom et al., 2002; Brayet al., 2005). A rapidly growing theoretical and empirical literatureincluding laboratory experiments explores the key factors that affectthe likelihood of successful cooperation in the provision of publicgoods and in the management of common-pool resources (Ostrom,2000). Froma development perspective, factors that can potentially beactively promoted as a means to improve cooperative self-governanceare of particular interest.
A central finding from laboratory experiments is that face-to-facecommunication amongmembers of a group is one of themost effectivefactors promoting cooperation in groups (Hackett et al., 1994; OstromandWalker, 1997). This effect of communication is not consistentwithcurrently accepted economic theory, because verbal agreements inthese experiments are not enforced (Ostrom, 2000). However, thefinding agreeswith experience from real-world settings. In the contextof common resource management, the communication process mayhelp establish trust and cooperation among resource users, which are
1 The form of public participation pursued in this study has also been termedparticipatory research (Wiber et al., 2004). Participatory research (Brandao, 1999) or“action research” (Thiollent, 2000) is a communication-intensive process with the aimto find out how the efficiency of resource management can be increased. A central aimof participatory research is that resource users with different social conditions learnindependently of external intervention (like the government) to plan, organize andachieve changes in resource extraction in a conscious, free and intelligent way withthe maximum reflection possible (Barbier, 2002).
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essential for avoiding excessive extraction of common resources(Cardenas et al., 2000). Another finding from the laboratory is thatmany individuals are conditionally cooperative, that is, their level ofcooperation depends positively on the level of cooperation of others(Fischbacher et al., 2001). Field studies involving donations confirmthat behaviour is affected by information that affects individual beliefsabout the behaviour of others (e.g. Frey and Meier, 2004; Shang andCroson, 2005). The availability of such information can be enhancedthrough opportunities for communication (Ostrom, 2007).
One possibility for stimulating communication about resource use ina meaningful way is to allow public participation in decisions regardingresource management. Public involvement in a deliberative decisionprocess may have benefits over and above those of learning aboutefficient and sustainable resource use andmanagement. Resource userswho can themselves have an impact on the rules guiding resourcemanagementmay for this very reason bemorewilling to actually followthose rules even if the rules restrict their short-termgains from resourceextraction (Ostrom, 2000; Stiglitz, 2002).
The current evidence about effects of public participation on thelikelihood of cooperation in resource management is largely based onobservational studies (e.g. Patel et al., 2007). However, withobservational evidence alone it is difficult to isolate the role ofparticipation and to understand its importance regarding thelikelihood of cooperation and other forms of collective action relativeto other important factors such as individual characteristics orexisting beliefs about the cooperation of others.
We are not aware of any study that has experimentally examinedthe effects of public participation on the willingness to cooperate inCPR management or in the provision of public goods in a real-worldsituation. In this paper, we call this approach a field experimentbecause it stands between an observational field study and a labo-ratory experiment, taking the component “field” from the first and thecomponent “experiment” from the second. Perhaps the closest to ourstudy is a recent experiment that examined the effect of a participatoryeducational programon the participants' willingness to contribute to apublic good (Urama andHodge, 2006). In this study, the authors reportthat participation can “positively” affect responses in a survey; that is,people stated a higher willingness to contribute to a public good.
Here we present the result from a field experiment with six fishingcommunities facing problems of over-fishing. Fishermen in three outof the six sampled communities participated in the development ofproposals for a more sustainable fishery resource management. Wethen used a survey to examine and test if participation increased thewillingness to contribute to the implementation of each of three finalproposals. In addition, we examined whether participants' beliefsabout the willingness of other participants to contribute to a proposaldetermined their own willingness to contribute to the same proposal.To examine the robustness of stated contributions to externalinformation, we further tested how the opinion of local communityleaders about the proposed measures affected the responses. Bothparticipation and leader opinion affected the willingness of partici-pants to contribute in one of three resource management proposals.However, these effects were weak relative to the influence ofindividual characteristics, in particular the individual beliefs aboutthe cooperation of others in sustainable management actions.
The paper is organized as follows. In the next section we reviewrelevant literature on public deliberation and its effect on cooperation inCPR management. In Sections 3 and 4 the study area and methods aredescribed. Section 5 presents the results, followed by the conclusions.
2. Public deliberation and cooperation in CPR management
2.1. Public deliberation
The type of public participation we examined in the present studyis a form of “deliberation” as defined by political scientists (Chambers,
2003; Carpini et al., 2004).1 Chambers (2003, p. 309) defines delibera-tion as follows:
Generally speaking, we can say that deliberation is debate anddiscussion aimed at producing reasonable, well-informed opi-nions in which participants are willing to revise preferences inlight of discussion, new information, and claims made by fellowparticipants. Although consensus need not be the ultimate aim ofdeliberation, and participants are expected to pursue theirinterests, an overarching interest in the legitimacy of outcomes(understood as justification to all affected) ideally characterizesdeliberation.
The term public deliberation emerges from deliberative demo-cratic theory where public deliberation is seen as a cornerstone ofparticipatory democracy and representative government (e.g. Dewey,1954; Dahl, 1989; Habermas, 1996). In contrast to economic under-standings of democracy in which fixed preferences and interestscompete via fair mechanisms of aggregation, deliberative democracyfocuses on communicative processes of opinion and will formationthat precedes voting (Carpini et al., 2004).
In their review of the empirical literature on public deliberationand citizen engagement, Carpini et al. (2004) find that it is generallyexpected that public deliberation is a means to more sound individualand collective decisions and to greater support for responsive publicofficials (e.g. Gastil, 2000). Although much of the empirical literaturefocuses on intermediary variables, such as political learning (as mea-sured by pre–post tests of factual knowledge), perceived legitimacy,or consensus, rather than on more direct efficiency benefits, theevidence for beneficial effects on those variables is substantial.
However, not all studies are universally positive in their conclu-sions about the benefits of public deliberation. Not all citizens wish toengage more directly in political decision-making through delibera-tion (e.g. Sunstein, 2001). Moreover, it has been pointed out thatpublic deliberation can also be unrepresentative, subject to consciousmanipulation, and disconnected from actual decision-making. Thus,satisfaction with deliberative participation depends heavily onwhether the form of deliberation is suitable to the issue and thegroups involved (Mansbridge, 1983).
2.2. Participation and efficiency in CPR management
Common-pool resource dilemmas, especially in developingcountries, have been a key interest of researchers examining howdeliberation (and communication more generally) can promoteefficient resource use through enhanced cooperation (e.g. Basurto,2005; Armitage, 2005; Primmer and Kyllonen, 2006). Recently,researchers have complemented the findings of these observationalstudies by laboratory experiments in which opportunities to com-municate could be directly manipulated in situations similar to CPRsettings (reviewed by Ostrom, 2006).
Case-study research has found that involving stakeholders canpromote sustainablemanagement (e.g. Patel et al., 2007), but it has alsobeen found that community-based project design with participatorymechanisms might not solve management without concomitantpolitical and statutory backing (Carter and Hill, 2007). Furthermore,it appears that field settings, unlike experimental settings, producehighly variable results which highlight the important role of contextual
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factors beyond those examined in the laboratory experiments (Carpiniet al., 2004; Levitt and List, 2007). This result suggests that interestingfurther insights could be gained by experiments that manipulateopportunities for communication in a field setting.
In assessing more specific hypothesized effects of public deliber-ation on cooperation in resource management it seems useful todistinguish effects through impacts of deliberation on the individuallyavailable information set (including information about efficiency gainsof cooperation and about the likely behaviour of other individuals) andeffects mediated through perceived “procedural” benefits of partici-patory decision-making.
2.2.1. Effects through the available information setThe communication involved in participatory approaches may
promote cooperation in common-pool resource management in atleast two important ways.
First, communication may help individuals to establish trust andmutually agree on cooperation. It is well known that many peoplefollow rules only if they believe that others follow and enforce theserules as well (e.g. Bromley, 1992; Fehr et al., 2002). There is empiricalevidence from the laboratory as well as from the field thatcontributions to a public good depend on the contributions of peers(Shang and Croson, 2005). For example, holding a positive beliefabout the likely contribution of others implies that people are morelikely to spend money for charitable donations or are more likely topay their taxes correctly (Frey and Meier, 2004; Fellner et al., 2006).As a consequence, making one small change in the structure oflaboratory experiments by enabling subjects to engage in face-to-facecommunication between decision rounds enables them to approachsocially optimal behaviour rather than severely overexploiting thecommons (Ostrom, 2007).
Second, communication can improve cooperation because addition-al information can be used in solving complex resource issues (e.g.Luskin et al., 2002).Hoehn andRandall (2000) suggested that behaviouris influenced by resource-quality information. Information gatheringand provision by local leaders can play a key role in consensus buildingand thus facilitate collective action (Palmer, 2007). Urama and Hodge(2006) argue that preferences about complex resource issues are“weakly held due to an incomplete appreciation of the welfareimplications of the environmental change scenario(s)”. This seems tobe confirmed by recent studies contrasting responses after groupdeliberationwith responses by isolated survey respondents (Macmillanet al., 2002, 2006; Alvarez-Farizo andHanley, 2006; Alvarez-Farizo et al.,2007). One way to isolate the role of exchanging information about thewelfare implications of alternative management is to experimentallystudy the effects of providing leader opinions to ordinary citizens withlow levels of factual knowledge. In choices about complex resourceissues, it has been shown that access to such information, particularlyadvice by trusted experts with known political orientation, can en-hance the consistency of individual decisions (Lupia, 1994; Lupia andMatsusaka, 2004; Schläpfer et al., 2008).
2.2.2. Effects through perceived procedural benefitsGiving people the opportunity to voice their opinion increases their
sense that the process is fair and the outcome legitimate, regardless ofwhether they agree substantively with the outcome (Tyler, 1994,2001). Experimental research on jury deliberations suggests that theperception of “procedural justice” (i.e., the perception that the processby which a decision was reached was fair) leads to greater support forthe group's decision (Carpini et al., 2004). Frey et al. (2004) and Stutzerand Frey (2006) argue that people derive utility from the processesinvolved in decision making over and above the utility gained fromoutcomes.
In the context of resource management, Pouta et al. (2002) com-pared two planning methods in otherwise uniformly designed valua-tion scenarios, the actual planning, which the public criticized as being
bureaucratic, and a hypothetical one in which the planning procedurewas described as participatory. Their results indicated that theplanning method had a significant effect on people's willingness tocontribute to nature conservation. In addition, procedural effects mayalso influence the available information set, as individuals whoseopinion counts in politics are more likely to gather and processrelevant information (Benz and Stutzer, 2004).
The present study contributes to the literature by experimentallyexamining effects of a participatory process on willingness to con-tribute to sustainable common resource management. Furthermore,given a complex resource issue in which payoffs of cooperation mightnot be as easily understood as in previous laboratory experiments,we also experimentally examine how willingness to contribute tosustainable management is affected by advice from local communityleaders.
3. Study area
Our research was conducted with fishermen in the protected area“Área de Proteção Ambiental Lago de Pedra do Cavalo” (APA) in thestate of Bahia in Brazil. A large proportion of the individuals living inthe APA are fishermen and farmers, and the natural resources in theprotected area provide the basis for a living for most of the localpopulation. The lake Pedra do Cavalo is also of major importance forthe State of Bahia; it provides water to 4 million people. About 40,000families live in the APA, and most of them depend directly on atleast one of the three common resources: fish, game and natural andplanted vegetation. An earlier research project in two communities ofthe area had revealed that these resources are indeed not used in asustainable way (Cavalcanti, 2003). One of the main reasons is theoverexploitation and degradation of the resources. According to thelocal fishermen, the decrease of the fish stock, which is of concern inthe present study, is probably due to the fact that most fishermencatch small fish and do not stop fishing during the recovery period.From 2002 to 2004 the Centro de Recursos Ambientais Bahia(Environmental Resources Centre of the State of Bahia) and thelocal University of Feira de Santana-Brazil worked together to form aManagement Council (MC) for this area with the aim of promotingdiscussion of the local problems and of finding solutions jointly withthe local stakeholders. The members of the MC are the communities'leaders, representatives of public and private institutions, NGOs andthe municipal governments located in the protected area. It washoped that the MC as a new institution might help in developingpractical and relevant proposals to foster the sustainable use of theresources in the APA.
4. Methods
4.1. Overview of the experimental design
The participatory process that we initiated involved six distinctsteps (Fig. 1): (1) a first interaction with the MC of the protected area,(2) a survey of socioeconomic variables in the study communities,(3) participatory development of proposals about common resourcemanagements in three communities, (4) development of final pro-posals with the MC, (5) solicitation of leader opinions on the pro-posals, and (6) a survey of beliefs and stated willingness to contributeto the proposals. The procedure is explained in detail in the followingsection.
4.2. Interaction and survey process
4.2.1. Step 1: Interaction with the Management Council of the protectedarea
Our interaction began with the MC of the APA. In a meeting, weasked the members of this institution about their opinions regarding
Fig. 1. Overview of the experimental design and research process (WTC, MC, Q and C refer to willingness to contribute, Management Council, questionnaire and communities,respectively).
Table 1Number of participants in the first and second questionnaires.
Community Number of participantsFirst questionnaire
Number of participantsSecond questionnaire
A 26 20B 31 20C 26 22D 42 31
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our research project and if they were willing to support the par-ticipatory process. All MC members responded positively and agreedto take part in the participatory process.
4.2.2. Step 2: Survey of socioeconomic variables through thefirst questionnaire
As a next step, we conducted a questionnaire in the six fishingcommunities A, B, C, D, E and F.2 The goal of this step was to obtain anoverview of the current fishing situation and socioeconomic variables.The interviews were conducted in August 2006 by the first author andthree trained helpers. The helpers were biology students in the thirdand seventh semesters of the University of Feira de Santana-Bahia andwere familiar with the situation of the fishermen in this area. In total,we interviewed 197 fishermen (Table 1) before the following inter-vention steps.
4.2.3. Step 3: Implementation of participation in three communitiesWe assigned three of the six communities (A, B and E) arbitrarily
to a treatment group where we conducted meetings with the goal ofdeveloping concrete proposals to improve the “fishing situation”, orthe management of the fishery resource. In A, 15 fishermen showedup at the meeting; in B, 16 fishermen; and in E, 26 fishermen. Themeetings were held in August/September 2006 and lasted 4 to 5 heach.
A participatory meeting consisted of two parts. In the first part, wepresented the fishermen with the data of the questionnaire from step2. Thus they learned what the beliefs, perceptions and knowledge of
2 The real names of the communities are not revealed to ensure anonymity.
members of their own community were. In the second, much longerpart of the meeting we started a discussion among the fishermenabout the main problems related to the use of the fishing resourcesand asked them to develop proposals on how to solve these problems.We tried to be as neutral as possible and not influence the develop-ment of the proposals. Each community developed three or fourproposals. For each meeting, we recorded a short protocol summa-rizing arguments and specific proposals.
4.2.4. Step 4: Development of final proposals with the MCFollowing the meetings with the communities, we presented and
discussed the proposals with members of the MC. We asked themwhich proposals in their opinion were likely to successfully to pro-mote sustainable resource management. We tried to focus on thepracticability of each proposal and its potential for implementationand enforcement within a short period of time. The representativeschose and modified some of the original proposals and thus helped us
E 46 29F 26 21Total 197 143
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formulate the final proposals that we used in the following steps (seeSection 6 for proposals).
4.2.5. Step 5: Solicitation of leader opinionsIn each community, we identified the community leader3 (except
in community D for which we provided two leader opinions) andasked them for their opinion regarding each of the final proposals.More specifically, we recorded for each proposal whether the leaderhad “no doubt”, “a bit of doubt” or “much doubt” that the proposalwould improve the situation for the fishermen.
4.2.6. Step 6: Survey of beliefs and stated willingness to contribute to theproposals
After the intervention (steps 3–5)we interviewed 143 participantswith a second questionnaire. In each of the six communities weprovided the fishermenwith basic information about the participatoryprocess that had produced the proposals and with the final proposalsthemselves. To test for stability of responses in the face of politicaladvice (Lupia, 1994; Schläpfer et al., 2008), a randomly selected subsetof respondents (half of the participants in each community) alsoreceived their local leaders' recommendations on each proposal,whereas the other half did not receive this information. In thisway,wecould examine whether and how participation or opinions fromleaders affected the individualfishermen'swillingness to contribute tothe developed proposals, alongside socioeconomic variables andbeliefs about the contribution of others.
Table 1 shows the number of participants in the second ques-tionnaire for each community. A total of 143 individuals (72% ofthose participating in the first interview) could be interviewed inthe second questionnaire. 69 fishermen took part in the participatoryprocess, and 33 of themwere informed of the opinion of their leaders.The remaining 74 fishermen were not involved in the participatoryprocess, but 36 out of them were provided with the opinion of theirleaders.
4.3. Hypotheses
We tested the following hypotheses: (a) the participatory processand the leader opinions affect willingness to contribute; and (b)socioeconomic variables and individual beliefs also influence willing-ness to contribute. More precisely, we hypothesized that the participa-tion affects the willingness to contribute positively, whereas theinfluence of the leaders depends on the content of their opinions.Furthermore, we expected that there is a positive correlation betweenbeliefs about contributions of others and ownwillingness to contribute.
4.4. Statistical analysis
We used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and ordinalregression (logit link) to analyze the influence of participation, leaders'opinion and individual beliefs on the willingness to contribute tosuggested proposals for sustainable fishing. Additionally, we used OLSregression to test the effects of the socioeconomic variables of education,age, gender and religiosity on individual beliefs. We summarized theresults of these analyses in tables containing the regression coefficientswith their standard errors and t-values. Amore rigorous way to test thesignificance of the above regressors on response variables is themixed-model analysis of variance/deviance approach (ANOVA tables in theAppendix; McCullagh and Nelder, 1989). This approach includes theadditional explanatory terms community (n=6) and groups (n=13)
3 The leaders had been elected by the inhabitants of their communities duringmeetings held to form the MC. The role of the leader is to represent his/her communityin the meetings of the MC and thereafter inform the fishermen about the decisionstaken in these meetings.
as random factors in the analysis. In this case, the influence of partici-pation is tested against the variation between communities. However,this test uses an F-value with one and four degrees of freedom only andthus has low statistical power. Therefore, we focus more on the regres-sion analysis for interpretation of significances. The mixed-modelANOVA did allow us to test whether the variation among communitiesor groups was significant, which was never the case.
First, we fitted a complex model that included socioeconomicand belief variables as covariates together with the two presence/absence factors of participation and leader opinion. Within the factorleader opinion, we inserted a contrast reflecting the degree of sup-port of the leader opinion for a proposal. In the second model weomitted this contrast. In the third model we additionally omitted thesocioeconomic variables. In the fourth model (only used for proposaltwo, see below), we kept one belief variable together with the twofactors of participation and leader opinion as explanatory terms. Inthe fifth model, we further removed the remaining belief variable sothat only participation and leader opinion were left as explanatoryterms. We provide ANOVA tables for the first and the third model(Appendix A).
5. Data overview and description of the final proposals
In this section, we first provide an overview of the fishingbehaviour of our subject pool and then describe the three proposalsthat were developed by the fishermen and selected and finalized bythe MC. In addition, we report the stated voluntary contributions toeach of these proposals (sample pooled over all six communities).
5.1. Current fishing practice in the APA
Fishery is traditionally a male profession; hence, it is not surprisingthat 87% of the 197 fishermen who completed the first questionnairewere men. 122 of them catch both fish and shrimp, and the remaindercatch predominantly either fish or shrimp. On average, fishermen catch11.45 k of fish and 79.73 l of shrimp per week. The participants in thisfirst survey were on average 36.5 years old and had 3.7 years of schooleducation. Most of them were catholic and considered themselves as“somewhat” religious.
5.2. Developed proposals
5.2.1. Proposal 1: Selling of catch in one centralized place through the“Colonia”
A first suggestion by some fishermen was to create a centralizedmarket where their catch would be sold exclusively. The aim of thisproposal was that the catch could be better controlled and the sale ofillegal catch (small fish) discouraged. Their idea was to use thenetwork of an existing organization, the “Colonia”.4 The proposal wasto use the Colonia to establish a place where fishermen would bringtheir catch and organize the selling of the catch. We asked thefishermen how many hours they were willing to volunteer in thisplace per week. Nearly all fishermenwere willing to volunteer at leastsome hours. On average, the interviewed fishermen were willing towork 5.6 h per week in the Colonia, and almost 25% wanted to work2 h per week (Fig. 2). We also asked the participants howmany hoursthey believed others were willing to volunteer for the Colonia. Onaverage, fishermen believed that others would contribute 4.8 h ofwork per week, and 84.6% believed that the others would work for atleast 2 h per week in the Colonia.
4 The Colonia is a fishing association that was formed by the representatives of theMC and the fishermen in the protected area with the aim of helping the fishermen toorganize themselves. It is through the Colonia, for example, that fishermen can receivea fishing card which, according to a recent plan of the regional government, will entitlethe fishermen to transfer payments during the recovery period of the fish.
Fig. 2. Willingness to contribute to the Colonia.
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5.2.2. Proposal 2: Self-monitoringMostfishermenwantedmore controls preventing the catchor sale of
smallfish and shrimp.According to thefishermen therewere at the timefew controls by the governmental institution responsible for inspection,the IBAMA (Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable NaturalResources). Many fishermen learned during their discussions that theythemselves need tomonitor the size offish and shrimp caught by othersin order to avoid over-fishing and to enforce the law specifying theminimum size of fish and shrimp which can be caught. The proposalsuggested that inspection would be more effective if the fishermenthemselves would denounce misbehaviour and report it to the IBAMA.We asked the fishermen about their willingness to denounce misbeha-viour at several levels of severity. The fishermen varied considerably intheir willingness to denounce (Table 2). In the second questionnaire 16fishermen claimed that they would never denounce another fishermanwhocaughtfishor shrimp smaller than theminimumsize, 35fishermenwould only denounce another fisherman whose catch included a largefraction of small fish, andmore than half of the fishermen would reportanother fisherman catching even a few small fish. We also wanted toknow how many out of ten fishermen they believed were willing todenouncemisbehaviour. Almost 50% believed that at leastfive out of tenfishermen would denounce misbehaviour, with an average estimate of6.2.
5.2.3. Proposal 3: Replacing plastic-bottle traps by more sustainabletraps
At present, modified plastic bottles, or garrafas, are the standardgear for catching shrimp. Garrafas are locally believed to be harmfulfor the shrimp population because small shrimp can be caught in alarge quantity with these traps. Locals think that these traps may bethe main reason for the diminishing shrimp population. Some yearsago, another trap, the so-called cofo, was used more frequently. Thecofo is a bamboo basket in whichmainly big shrimp are caught. One ofthe reasons why the cofo was replaced by the garrafas is that thematerial to manufacture cofos is comparatively expensive. The MC
Table 2Threshold for willingness to denounce (=proposal 2).
Never,irrespectiveof thedegree ofmisbehaviour
If catch contains…
…a lot ofsmall fish/shrimp
…somesmall fish/shrimp
…a bit ofsmall fish/shrimp
…little bitsmall fish/shrimp
Number ofobservations
16 35 5 6 81
Percentage 11.2 24.5 3.5 4.2 56.6
was already aware that it would be important that fishermen couldobtain the necessary materials at an affordable price and was alreadylooking for an organization willing to donate bamboo for this purpose.The third proposal was thus to replace garrafas by cofos, that is,fishermen would have to hand over a considerable number of theirgarrafas in exchange for receiving bamboo to manufacture cofos. Weasked the fishermen the maximum number of their garrafas theywere willing to give up if in return they received bamboo for manu-facturing 120 cofos (Fig. 3). Around 70% were willing to give at least120 garrafas in exchange for material for 120 cofos. We also asked thefishermen how many unsustainable traps they believed the otherfishermen of their community were willing to hand over in exchangefor materials to manufacture sustainable traps. The average estimatewas 222 garrafas, with 67% of the fishermen expecting that otherswould hand over 120 or more.
6. Results
In this section, we analyze the impact of participation and leaderopinion on the willingness to contribute to the proposals and howwillingness to contribute was related to individual variables such associoeconomic status and beliefs about the contribution of otherfishermen to sustainable resource use.
6.1. Influence of participation, leaders' opinion and individual beliefs onstated willingness to contribute (WTC)
Results of the analyses of the influence of participation, leaders'opinion and individual beliefs on the willingness to contribute to thethree proposals are summarized in Tables 4–6 and Tables 8–10 inAppendix A. The explanatory variables included in the models arepresented in Table 3.
6.1.1. Participatory process and willingness to contributeOur results suggest that the initiated participatory process can
increase the willingness to contribute. The fishermenwho took part ina participatory process were more willing to contribute to proposal 2,that is, they were more willing to denounce fishing misbehaviour(Table 4). The participation dummy is positive and significant on the90% level (models 2 and 3), although not significant in the modelswith all controls. In models 4 and 5 where we do not control for thebelief about the mesh size other fishermen use, the participationdummy is positive but not significant.
6.1.2. Leader opinion and willingness to contributeLeader opinion had a significant effect in the last proposal
(Table 5). In models 2 and 3 the leaders' opinions significantly
Fig. 3. Willingness to exchange garrafas.
Table 3Explanatory variables used in the models (SD indicates the standard deviation).
Variable Description Mean SD
Explanatory variablesParticipation Variable for participation treatment: 0 = no participation; 1 = with participationOpinion leader (o.l.) Variable for information treatment: 0 = participant was not informed; 1 = informedCommunity Communities: A, B, C, D, E and F.Direction of the o.l. The direction of the opinion of the leader: −1 = the leader had “much doubt”; 0 = he had “no opinion”
or the leader had “little doubt”; and 1 = he had “no doubt”Group Refers to the interaction between the variables: community, opinion leader and direction of the opinion leaderAge Age of fishermen in years 36.5 13.4Gender 0 = male; 1 = female 0.115 0.321Education Years spent in school 3.67 2.93Religiosity Religiosity of fishermen: 0 = “without religion”; 1 = “not religious”; 2 = “a little bit”; 3 = “a bit”; 4 =
“some”; and 5 = “very religious”3.42 1.31
Caught fish Fish caught per week in kilograms 11.45 11.17Number of garrafas Number of plastic-bottle traps in possession of fishermen 309.6 196.2Belief mesh size other communities Beliefs on the mesh size fishermen form from other communities use 7.39 1.38Field belief proposal 1 Belief on others' willingness to contribute to the Colonia in working hours 6.15 3.07Field belief proposal 2 Belief on how many out of 10 fishermen would denounce someone to the IBAMA selling small fish/shrimp 4.85 4.78Field belief proposal 3 Belief on how many plastic-bottle traps other fishermen would hand in if they received materials to make 120 cofos 221.6 198.5
Dependent variablesProposal 1 Willingness to contribute to the Colonia in working hours 5.60 5.25Proposal 2 Threshold at which fishermen would be willing to denounce someone to the IBAMA: 0 = “I would not
denounce”; 1 = he sells “a little bit” of small shrimp and fish; 2 = he sells “a bit” of small shrimp and fish;3 = he sells “some” small shrimp and fish; and 4 = he sells “a lot” of small shrimp and fish
2.71 1.59
Proposal 3 Number of plastic-bottle traps fishermen would be willing to hand in if they received materials to make 120 cofos 179.4 141.6
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affected the willingness to exchange garrafas. Fishermen who wereinformed about the opinion of the leaderwerewilling to contribute 55garrafas more on average. However, how strongly the leaderssupported the proposal did not matter. In the other two proposals,there was no effect of the opinion leader dummy or the direction ofthe dummy. It seems that, if there was any influence, simply havingaccess to information, but not the direction of it, had influencedwillingness of fishermen to contribute to a proposal.
6.1.3. Beliefs and willingness to contributeWe found that beliefs played an important role for each of our
three proposals. In Tables 5 and 6, the belief variable is alwayssignificant at the 99% level, and in Table 4 it is significant at the 95%level. Also, the coefficients are large; for instance, fishermen whobelieved the other fishermen were willing to volunteer in the Colonia
Table 4Willingness to denounce misbehaviour (logistic regression).
Notes: ⁎⁎⁎99% significance; ⁎⁎95% significance; ⁎90% significance; numbers representlinear estimates and standard errors in parentheses.
1 h more expressed a willingness to volunteer about 50 min longer(Table 6). Furthermore, they were willing to hand over about 30garrafas more if they believed the others handed over 100 garrafasmore (Table 5). Moreover, they were also more inclined to denouncemisbehaviour if they believed the others would do so as well.
6.1.4. Beliefs and socioeconomic variablesSince beliefs had a strong influence on the willingness to con-
tribute to the three proposals developed by the fishermen, we alsoexamined how socioeconomic variables were associated with thebeliefs and whether beliefs were different for fishermen who tookpart in the participatory process (Table 7).We use regression analyses
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(OLS) for all three beliefs. The socioeconomic variables we used in theanalyses were education, age, gender and religiosity. For two of thethree beliefs, we found no significant associations with the socioeco-nomic variables. For the belief in the last proposal, we found genderand religiosity to be weakly significant. Women seemed to have morenegative beliefs than men; they believed that the other fishermenwould hand in 88 garrafas fewer than the men believed. Religiousfishermen were somewhat more optimistic and believed otherfishermen would hand in more garrafas in exchange of cofos. In allthree belief measures, we found no differences for fishermen whotook part in the participatory process; that is, fishermen who wereassigned to the participatory treatment did not have more or lessoptimistic beliefs than fishermen who were assigned to the controlgroup. Finally, we tested for indirect effects of participation byincluding the interaction beliefs×participation in the models to
explain willingness to contribute. None of these interactions wassignificant at the 10% level.
7. Conclusion
The aim of this research was to examine the effects of a par-ticipatory process on the willingness to contribute to cooperativecommon-pool resource management in a protected area in Brazil.We conducted a field experiment to isolate the effects of publicparticipation in the design of resource management proposals. In acommunity-level experimental treatment we manipulated the op-portunity for community participation in developing proposals forcooperative resource management. In a second treatment, we manip-ulated individual access to local expert evaluations of the resultingresource management proposals.
The experiment demonstrated that it is possible to experimentallyinvestigate how public involvement affects cooperation in communi-ty-based resource management. Our results suggest that a participa-tory approach in developing management proposals may promotecooperation in situations where resources are difficult to monitor andwhere efficient management may thus rely on informal sanctioninginstitutions. In particular, we found some evidence that the partici-patory process initiated in this study made fishermen think about therole of self-monitoring in resource management; under the partici-pation treatment, the fishermen tended to be more willing to de-nounce fishingmisbehaviour. This finding is in agreementwith resultsof laboratory experiments showing that altruistic punishment of un-cooperative acts is a key element in promoting cooperation (e.g. Fehrand Gächter, 2002).
The evidence for effects of leader opinions was relatively weak.Wefound a significant effect on responses about thewillingness to changeunsustainable traps, but the direction of the leader opinion was notsystematically related to the responses. A possible explanation is thatthe fishermen had in this case already formed consistent beliefs andwillingness to contribute to the proposals, even without access to theadvice of their community leaders. This finding contrasts with theresults of Schläpfer and Soliva (2008) and Schläpfer et al. (2008) whoshowed that knowledge of expert evaluations can strongly affectstated preferences for public goods.
A strong pattern in our data is that beliefs and the willingness tocontribute are highly correlated.Many fishermen reported theywouldcontribute more if they believed others would contribute as well.While this correlative result does not allow a direct causal interpre-tation, our finding is at least consistent with the interpretation thatmany fishermen are conditionally cooperative (see Frey and Meier,2004; Shang and Croson, 2005). In principle at least, participatoryprocesses should thus offer an opportunity to favourably influencebeliefs. Our findings suggest that an increased attention to beliefs maybe useful for a better understanding of individual cooperation in themanagement of common-pool resources. The enhanced communica-tion initiated by participatory research could help develop reputationand trust among the participants, and this may in turn change thebeliefs in a direction that is favourable for successful collective action.
Our findings possibly underestimate the potential of the partici-patory process. Due to time and resource constraints, we could onlybegin a participatory process. Insights into the effects of an extendedprocess of communication and deliberation about cooperative re-source management are currently being examined in ongoing fieldresearch in the study area.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Andreas Leibbrandt for the field assistance andvaluable comments, to the representatives of theManagement Councilas well as the fishermen of the Protected Area “Lago de Pedra doCavalo” in Brazil, to the Institute for Environmental Education (EEA) at
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the University of Feira de Santana-Brazil for kind support in the fieldand to participants at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the EuropeanAssociation of Environmental and Resource Economists for providingvaluable comments. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for theirhelpful comments.
Appendix A
Table 8Willingness to denounce misbehaviour (= proposal 2).
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