Abstract
The key pillar of Faustmann’s forest economics that individuals have only self-regarding preferences was tested. An asymmetric public good game, termed the Joint Forest Management game, was used to test user groups’ preferences for forest management. User groups were divided in four categories—rich, poor, landless, and women. Field experiments were conducted in 38 villages in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh states of India under four different treatments—no communication, face-to-face communication, light punishment to defectors and heavy punishment to defectors. In Gujarat, in 70 % of cases, and in Himachal Pradesh, in 85 % of cases, user groups expressed preferences different than the preferences of a rational economic agent. The percentage of user groups with pure other-regarding preferences was also small. A majority of the user groups expressed mixed preferences–preferences between pure self-regarding and pure other-regarding preferences. There was a wide variation in preferences across the four user groups. Face-to-face communication and punishment of free riders was found to increase cooperation, but rich groups were less deterred by punishment. The recognition of the diversity of preferences, ranging from pure self-regarding to pure other-regarding, and their variation across the user groups, is one of the key elements of Post-Faustmann forest economics, and should be incorporated into economic theories and resource management policies and strategies. Policy makers also need to focus on alternate means to meet the subsistence needs of poor villagers, especially women and landless people, to strengthen cooperative behavior of these user groups with respect to forest management.
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Shahi, C., Kant, S. (2013). Are Forest User Groups Rational Economic or Social Agents? Experimental Evidence from India. In: Kant, S. (eds) Post-Faustmann Forest Resource Economics. Sustainability, Economics, and Natural Resources, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5778-3_2
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