scholarly journals Social capital dynamics and collective action: the role of subjective satisfaction in a common pool resource experiment

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 512-531
Author(s):  
Leonardo Becchetti ◽  
Stefano Castriota ◽  
Pierluigi Conzo

AbstractIn low-income countries, grassroots collective action for the management of a common environmental resource is a well-known substitute for government provision of public goods. In our research we test experimentally what its effect is on social capital. To this purpose we structure a ‘sandwich’ experiment in which participants play a common pool resource game (CPRG) between two trust games in a Nairobi slum where social capital is scarce but informal rules regulating the commons are abundant. Our findings show that the change in trustworthiness between the two trust game rounds generated by the CPRG experience is crucially affected by the subjective satisfaction about the CPRG, rather than by standard objective measures related to CPRG players' behaviour. These results highlight that subjective satisfaction in a collective action has relevant predictive power on social capital creation, providing information which can be crucial to designing successful self-organized environmental resource regimes.

Hydrology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Francisco Muñoz-Arriola ◽  
Tarik Abdel-Monem ◽  
Alessandro Amaranto

Common pool resource (CPR) management has the potential to overcome the collective action dilemma, defined as the tendency for individual users to exploit natural resources and contribute to a tragedy of the commons. Design principles associated with effective CPR management help to ensure that arrangements work to the mutual benefit of water users. This study contributes to current research on CPR management by examining the process of implementing integrated management planning through the lens of CPR design principles. Integrated management plans facilitate the management of a complex common pool resource, ground and surface water resources having a hydrological connection. Water governance structures were evaluated through the use of participatory methods and observed records of interannual changes in rainfall, evapotranspiration, and ground water levels across the Northern High Plains. The findings, documented in statutes, field interviews and observed hydrologic variables, point to the potential for addressing large-scale collective action dilemmas, while building on the strengths of local control and participation. The feasibility of a “bottom up” system to foster groundwater resilience was evidenced by reductions in groundwater depths of 2 m in less than a decade.


Author(s):  
Tess Shiras ◽  
Oliver Cumming ◽  
Joe Brown ◽  
Becelar Muneme ◽  
Rassul Nala ◽  
...  

Shared sanitation—sanitation facilities shared by multiple households—is increasingly common in rapidly growing urban areas in low-income countries. However, shared sanitation facilities are often poorly maintained, dissuading regular use and potentially increasing disease risk. In a series of focus group discussions and in-depth interviews, we explored the determinants of shared sanitation management within the context of a larger-scale health impact evaluation of an improved, shared sanitation facility in Maputo, Mozambique. We identified a range of formal management practices users developed to maintain shared sanitation facilities, and found that management strategies were associated with perceived latrine quality. However—even within an intervention context—many users reported that there was no formal system for management of sanitation facilities at the compound level. Social capital played a critical role in the success of both formal and informal management strategies, and low social capital was associated with collective action failure. Shared sanitation facilities should consider ways to support social capital within target communities and identify simple, replicable behavior change models that are not dependent on complex social processes.


Author(s):  
Molood Ale Ebrahim Dehkordi ◽  
Amineh Ghorbani ◽  
Paulien Herder ◽  
Mike Farjam ◽  
Anders Forsman ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 319
Author(s):  
Ruben Weesie

Agro-pastoral dams (APDs) are an increasingly popular method of adaptation interventions improving communal water supply in rural West Africa. However, APDs are often constructed in areas where culturally heterogeneous pastoralists and farmers compete for similar land and water resources. Lifting open access water abundance is likely to change if not intensify ongoing tensions between farmers and settling Fulani herders. The extent of collective action and inclusivity of 6 APDs in Northern Ghana are analysed, combining theory from common-pool resource management and equity and justice in climate change adaptation into a proposed Inclusive Collective Action (ICA) model. Practically, the article demonstrates that neither fully excluding Fulani pastoralists nor making dams openly accessible results in inclusive APD usage and management where collective action is successful, and more dynamic forms of regional inclusion and exclusion are needed. Theoretically, the article identifies some of the limitations of applying the enabling conditions for collective action of common-pool resource theory as it tends to overlook negative aspects of excluding certain user groups in culturally heterogeneous contexts from managing and using a commons.


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