IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jaerec/doi10.1086-720287.html

The Creation of Social Norms under Weak Institutions

Author

Listed:
  • Florian Diekert
  • Tillmann Eymess
  • Joseph Luomba
  • Israel Waichman

Abstract

Formal regulations often fail to ensure sustainable management of natural resources. An alternative approach could rely on the interaction of norm-based interventions and social sanctions. Our lab-in-the-field experiment with fishermen at Lake Victoria studies how a norm-based intervention, namely, social information about high or low levels of previous cooperation, affects behavior and beliefs in a prisoner’s dilemma game with or without weak social sanctioning. Providing different social information succeeds in creating different norms of cooperation, but only if sanctioning is possible: cooperation rates start at a high level and stay at a high level when social information emphasizes cooperation but start at a low level and stay at a low level when social information emphasizes defection. Without social sanctioning, cooperation rates decline, irrespective of the social information. Particularly participants with close connection to others in their experimental session conform to the behavior that is emphasized by the social information message under sanctioning.

Suggested Citation

  • Florian Diekert & Tillmann Eymess & Joseph Luomba & Israel Waichman, 2022. "The Creation of Social Norms under Weak Institutions," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 9(6), pages 1127-1160.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jaerec:doi:10.1086/720287
    DOI: 10.1086/720287
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/720287
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/720287
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/720287?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Lidia Vidal-Meliá & Eva Camacho-Cuena & Till Requate & Israel Waichman, 2026. "Timing of Environmental Regulation and the Adoption of Low-Pollution Technologies: An Experiment," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 89(4), pages 1-29, April.
    2. Diederich, Johannes & Goeschl, Timo & Waichman, Israel, 2025. "Trading off autonomy and efficiency in choice architectures: Self-nudging versus social nudging," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 229(C).
    3. Händel, Philipp Daniel & Namuyiga, Dorothy Birungi, 2024. "Impact of externalities on fishers' risk-taking decisions: Evidence from an experimental study at Lake Victoria, Uganda," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).
    4. Dannenberg, Astrid & Diekert, Florian & Händel, Philipp, 2022. "The effects of social information and luck on risk behavior of small-scale fishers at Lake Victoria," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    5. Nhim, Tum & Richter, Andries, 2022. "Path dependencies and institutional traps in water governance – Evidence from Cambodia," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    6. Diekert, Florian & Eymess, Tillmann, 2024. "Changing collective action: Nudges and team decisions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 388-406.

    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:ucp:jaerec:doi:10.1086/720287. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JAERE .

    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.