A critical issue in the design of incentive mechanisms is the choice of whom to target. For forests, the leading schemes: [i] target locations with high ecosystem-service density; [ii] target additionality, i.e., locations where conservation would not occur without the incentive; or, at least effectively, [iii] reward previous private choices to conserve forest. We use a field experiment to examine the changes in contributions to forest conservation when we introduce each of those three selection rules.

Incentives conditioned on socially desired acts such as donating blood, departing conflict or mitigating climate change have increased in popularity. Many incentives are targeted, excluding some of the potential participants based upon characteristics or prior actions. We hypothesize that pro-sociality is reduced by exclusion, in of itself (i.e., fixing prices and income), and that the rationale for exclusion influences such 'behavioral spillovers'. 

This is a PhD dissertation by Haileselassie Medhin and containing seven self-contained papers:

We use a natural field experiment to investigate the hypothesis that generosity is partly involuntary, by examining whether individuals tend to avoid opportunities to act generously.

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.

This is a PhD dissertation by Anna Norden contains five papers:

A growing number of experimental studies focus on the differences between the lab and the field. One important difference between many lab and field experiments is how the endowment is obtained. By conducting a dictator game experiment, we investigate the influences of windfall and earned endowment on behavior in the laboratory and in the field.