IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/econjl/v133y2023i652p1265-1285..html

The Material basis of Cooperation: how Scarcity Reduces Trusting Behaviour

Author

Listed:
  • Gustav Agneman
  • Paolo Falco
  • Exaud Joel
  • Onesmo Selejio

Abstract

Trusting behaviour is a cornerstone of cooperation and, hence, economic performance, not least in poorer communities where economic transactions often rely on informal agreements. But trusting behaviour is potentially costly since the counterpart may decide to defect. In this study, we investigate whether food scarcity influences the level of trusting behaviour in rural Tanzania by leveraging quasi-experimental variation in food supply induced by the harvest. Through a lab-in-the-field experiment, we document that farmers display lower levels of trusting behaviour during the lean season compared to the abundant season and show that the difference is explained by variation in food scarcity.

Suggested Citation

  • Gustav Agneman & Paolo Falco & Exaud Joel & Onesmo Selejio, 2023. "The Material basis of Cooperation: how Scarcity Reduces Trusting Behaviour," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(652), pages 1265-1285.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:econjl:v:133:y:2023:i:652:p:1265-1285.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ej/ueac087
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan & Eldar Shafir, 2004. "A Behavioral-Economics View of Poverty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 419-423, May.
    2. Sumit Agarwal & Paige Marta Skiba & Jeremy Tobacman, 2009. "Payday Loans and Credit Cards: New Liquidity and Credit Scoring Puzzles?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 412-417, May.
    3. Cassar, Alessandra & Healy, Andrew & von Kessler, Carl, 2017. "Trust, Risk, and Time Preferences After a Natural Disaster: Experimental Evidence from Thailand," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 90-105.
    4. Garrick Blalock & David R. Just & Daniel H. Simon, 2007. "Hitting the Jackpot or Hitting the Skids: Entertainment, Poverty, and the Demand for State Lotteries," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(3), pages 545-570, July.
    5. Neugebauer, Tibor & Perote, Javier & Schmidt, Ulrich & Loos, Malte, 2009. "Selfish-biased conditional cooperation: On the decline of contributions in repeated public goods experiments," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 52-60, February.
    6. Boonmanunt, Suparee & Meier, Stephan, 2023. "The effect of financial constraints on in-group bias: Evidence from rice farmers in Thailand," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 207(C), pages 96-109.
    7. Edward Miguel & Michael Kremer, 2004. "Worms: Identifying Impacts on Education and Health in the Presence of Treatment Externalities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(1), pages 159-217, January.
    8. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher & Bernhard von Rosenbladt & J�rgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, "undated". "A Nation-Wide Laboratory: Examining trust and trustworthiness by integrating behavioral experiments into representative surveys," IEW - Working Papers 141, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    9. Fisman, Raymond & Jakiela, Pamela & Kariv, Shachar, 2015. "How did distributional preferences change during the Great Recession?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 84-95.
    10. Costa-Gomes, Miguel A. & Huck, Steffen & Weizsäcker, Georg, 2014. "Beliefs and actions in the trust game: Creating instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 298-309.
    11. Maxim Ananyev & Sergei Guriev, 2019. "Effect of Income on Trust: Evidence from the 2009 Economic Crisis in Russia," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(619), pages 1082-1118.
    12. Boonmanunt, Suparee & Kajackaite, Agne & Meier, Stephan, 2020. "Does poverty negate the impact of social norms on cheating?," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 124, pages 569-578.
    13. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, 2002. "Why Social Preferences Matter -- The Impact of Non-Selfish Motives on Competition, Cooperation and Incentives," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(478), pages 1-33, March.
    14. Mahmud Yesuf & Randall A. Bluffstone, 2009. "Poverty, Risk Aversion, and Path Dependence in Low-Income Countries: Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 91(4), pages 1022-1037.
    15. Maria Bigoni & Stefania Bortolotti & Marco Casari & Diego Gambetta, 2019. "At the Root of the North–South Cooperation Gap in Italy: Preferences or Beliefs?," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(619), pages 1139-1152.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Agneman, Gustav & Henriks, Sofia & Bäck, Hanna & Renström, Emma, 2024. "On the nexus between material and ideological determinants of climate policy support," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 219(C).
    2. repec:cam:camjip:2426 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Effrosyni Adamopoulou & Mattia Colombo & Eleftheria Triviza, 2024. "Early Life Conditions, Time Preferences, and Savings," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2024_583, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    4. Vesco, Paola & Baliki, Ghassan & Brück, Tilman & Döring, Stefan & Eriksson, Anneli & Fjelde, Hanne & Guha-Sapir, Debarati & Hall, Jonathan & Knutsen, Carl Henrik & Leis, Maxine R. & Mueller, Hannes & , 2025. "The impacts of armed conflict on human development: A review of the literature," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Adamopoulou, Effrosyni & Colombo, Mattia & Triviza, Eleftheria, 2024. "Early life conditions, time preferences, and savings," ZEW Discussion Papers 24-052, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    2. James Igoe Walsh & Alexander Kustov & Ivan Flores Martinez, 2025. "Collective Shocks and Social Preferences: A Global, Subnational Analysis," HiCN Working Papers 444, Households in Conflict Network.
    3. Ms. Paola Giuliano & Mr. Antonio Spilimbergo, 2024. "Aggregate Shocks and the Formation of Preferences and Beliefs," IMF Working Papers 2024/195, International Monetary Fund.
    4. Yexin Zhou & Chenle Li & Björn Vollan & Juan He & Chenghua Guan, 2025. "The development of egalitarianism: evidence from children and adults in China," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 64(4), pages 819-855, June.
    5. Boonmanunt, Suparee & Meier, Stephan, 2023. "The effect of financial constraints on in-group bias: Evidence from rice farmers in Thailand," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 207(C), pages 96-109.
    6. Trung X. Hoang & Nga V. T. Le, 2021. "Natural disasters and risk aversion: Evidence from Vietnam," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 45(3), pages 211-229, August.
    7. Jeffrey V. Butler & Paola Giuliano & Luigi Guiso, 2015. "Trust, Values, And False Consensus," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56(3), pages 889-915, August.
    8. Delphine Boutin & Laurène Petifour & Haris Megzari, 2022. "Instability of preferences due to Covid-19 Crisis and emotions: a natural experiment from urban Burkina Faso," Working Papers hal-03623601, HAL.
    9. Daniel McFadden, 2009. "The human side of mechanism design: a tribute to Leo Hurwicz and Jean-Jacque Laffont," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 13(1), pages 77-100, April.
    10. Bartoš, Vojtěch, 2021. "Seasonal scarcity and sharing norms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 303-316.
    11. Hamza Umer, 2023. "Stability of pro-sociality and trust amid the Covid-19: panel data from the Netherlands," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 50(1), pages 255-287, February.
    12. Livia Alfonsi & Michal Bauer & Julie Chytilová & Edward Miguel, 2026. "Hitting Rock Bottom: Economic Hardship and Cheating," CESifo Working Paper Series 12398, CESifo.
    13. Castillo, José Gabriel & Hernandez, Manuel A., 2025. "Persistence of individual and social preferences in rural settings," IFPRI discussion papers 2345, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    14. Fijnanda van Klingeren, 2020. "Playing nice in the sandbox: On the role of heterogeneity, trust and cooperation in common-pool resources," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(8), pages 1-36, August.
    15. Haile, Kaleab K. & Nillesen, Eleonora & Tirivayi, Nyasha, 2020. "Impact of formal climate risk transfer mechanisms on risk-aversion: Empirical evidence from rural Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    16. Jeffrey Milyo & Jennifer M. Mellor & Lisa Anderson, 2005. "Did the Devil Make Them Do It? The Effects of Religion and Religiosity in Public Goods and Trust Games," Working Papers 0512, Department of Economics, University of Missouri.
    17. Sofianos, Andis, 2022. "Self-reported & revealed trust: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    18. Costa-Gomes, Miguel A. & Huck, Steffen & Weizsäcker, Georg, 2014. "Beliefs and actions in the trust game: Creating instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 88, pages 298-309.
    19. Anger, Silke & Christoph, Bernhard & Galkiewicz, Agata & Margaryan, Shushanik & Peter, Frauke & Sandner, Malte & Siedler, Thomas, 2024. "War, international spillovers, and adolescents: Evidence from Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 224(C), pages 181-193.
    20. Maria Cotofan & Robert Dur & Stephan Meier, 2021. "Does growing up in a recession increase compassion? The case of attitudes towards immigration," CEP Discussion Papers dp1757, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:econjl:v:133:y:2023:i:652:p:1265-1285.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press or the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/resssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.