The role of beliefs, trust, and risk in contributions to a public good

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Abstract: This paper experimentally investigates if and how beliefs, trust, and risk attitudes are associated with cooperative behavior. By applying incentivized elicitation methods to measure these concepts, we find that beliefs about others' cooperation and trust are positively correlated with cooperation in a public goods game. However, even though contributing to a public good resembles a situation of making decisions under strategic uncertainty, elicited risk preferences do not seem to explain cooperation in a systematic way.

Experiments

The influence of spouses on household decision making under risk: an experiment in rural China

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We study household decision making in a high-stakes experiment with a random sample of households in rural China. Spouses have to choose between risky lotteries, first separately and then jointly.

Experiments, Policy Design

Risk Preferences and Environmental Uncertainty: Implications for Crop Diversification Decisions in Ethiopia

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To the extent that diversifying income portfolio is used as a strategy for shielding against production risk, both individual risk aversion and weather uncertainty could affect crop diversification decisions. This paper is concerned with empirically assessing the effects of risk aversion and rainfall variability on farm level diversity.

 

 

Agriculture

Contract Duration under Incomplete Land Ownership Rights: Empirical Evidence from Rural Ethiopia

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Using the land tenure system in Ethiopia, where all land is state-owned and only farm households have usufruct rights, as a case study, we assessed the links between land owners’ tenure insecurity, associated behavioral factors, and contract length. In this paper, we analyze these links with survey data of rural households in the Amhara National Regional State of Ethiopia.

 

Agriculture, Experiments

Measuring risk aversion among the urban poor in Kolkata, India

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We examine risk preferences in an urban setting in a low-income developing country with nonstudent subjects by adapting the experimental approach of Holt and Laury (HL; 2002). We conducted 22 group experiments with 404 participants and used in-kind payoffs. The average respondent was ‘riskaverse’ (the midpoint of Constant Relative Risk Aversion (CRRA) intervals among participants was 0.53, roughly in line with most similar studies in poor countries).

Policy Design

Agricultural-risk management through community-based wildlife conservation in Zimbabwe

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether community-based wildlife conservation can potentially be added in rural farmers’ investment portfolio to diversify and consequently reduce agricultural risk.

Design/methodology/approach – The correlation coefficient is computed from national data on the rates of return on agricultural production and wildlife conservation, to find out whether wildlife conservation is a feasible hedge asset.

Agriculture, Conservation, Policy Design

Evaluating An Analytic-deliberative Risk-ranking Process in A Chinese Context

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In previous research, a deliberative process for integrating stakeholder perspectives in the ranking of risks was introduced and empirically tested with lay groups composed predominantly of Americans. In this paper, we explore the viability of this process with lay groups of Chinese, because previous research has shown that Americans and Chinese differ substantially along many dimensions of cognition and social organization relevant to decision-making.

Experiments

Treatment effects of Climate Change risk on mitigation and adaptation behaviour in an experimental setting

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The authors studied the potential tradeoff between countries’ investments in mitigation versus adaptation to climate change. Mitigating greenhouse gases may be a public good, but adaptation to climate change is a private good, benefiting only the country or individual.

Experiments, Climate Change