Unlocking Collective Action: The Role of Communication and Peer Effects on Performance in Threshold Public Good Games - Results from a Lab-in-the-Field Experiment in Vietnam

Sustainable development in agricultural trade requires agents to embrace changes to traditional practises that favour conservation and investing into their communities to incite social change. Recently, there has been a shift to prioritise the sustainability of coffee production in developing countries, with many exports now being subject to voluntary sustainability standards (VSS). These VSS apply pressures to farmers to adopt more environmentally and socially conscious production methods. Unfortunately, the uptake of VSS has remained low. To explore potential motives for this low uptake, we present the results of a lab in the field experiment uncovering the effect of information provision and peer influence on the performance of Vietnamese coffee farmers in a repeated one-shot threshold public good game. The purpose of this experiment was to understand whether cooperation towards the provision of a sustainable public good can be increased through information diffusion. This paper endeavoured to highlight a causal link between being more informed and an individual's valuation of sustainability. Estimates of farmer's willingness to contribute revealed that those who discussed information with peers were more likely to invest in sustainability for their community. These findings suggest peer pressure can nudge farmers toward the more socially optimal outcome.