Managing the Commons: Regulations, Migration and Natural Disasters

Abstract

Motivated by the variability in behavior of resource users, this dissertation investigates institutions and circumstances that can alter this behavior. In particular, this dissertation investigates how regulations, migration and natural disasters affect user behavior. Chapter 2 studies whether the way in which management rules are created affects the harvest behavior of resource users. Using a novel experimental design, this chapter addresses the unresolved issues in the literature on whether the endogeneity or exogeneity of the rule-making process affects how closely these rules are followed by the resource users. Experimental results show no evidence that exogenously imposed regulation crowds out a user's motivation to refrain from extraction. Results also show that communication and strategic learning matter. The third chapter examines deforestation in Indonesia and how a government incentivized migration program has affected deforestation in the country by disrupting social cohesion, increasing the perception of property rights insecurity, and increasing population. Using standard econometric techniques on a unique dataset that combines archival social data, MODIS and Landsat satellite imagery, and GIS, this chapter finds that migration increases deforestation through the disruption of social cohesion and the increased perception of property rights insecurity. Using both wood production as a proxy measure for deforestation and segregating the deforestation data from satellite images into forest zones, results show that migration also leads to increases in illegal logging. Lastly, chapter 4 studies the preferences of shers in the Philippines after one of the world's strongest typhoons ever recorded struck the country in November 2013. By comparing fairness, risk and time preferences of fishers who were hit by a typhoon and those who were not, this chapter finds that unexpected shocks like natural disasters change sher preferences. Experimental results show that fishers affected by a typhoon are less fair and more risk averse. Shocks do not seem to impact a fisher's discount rates. This dissertation contributes to the literature by disentangling and laying out possible reasons for explaining the behavior of resource users, and takes us towards a more comprehensive understanding of the institution and mechanisms that can alter their behavior.