Conference Agenda

Despite the benefits of transitioning to cleaner cooking technologies, burning highly polluting fuels on traditional cookstoves is still common amongst 2.3 billion people globally (IEA, 2023). The adoption of modern stoves is not the only barrier to this transition, since households with access to cleaner technologies still commonly use traditional stoves alongside these. One reason for this ‘stove stacking’ is that modern cooking technologies are often considered incompatible with established cooking practices. As well as being normal, such practices may be habitual, making change difficult and potentially unappealing. This paper asks whether behavioral insights can help to better align cooking practices with the capabilities of modern stoves, using a randomized control trial in Rwanda. Based on a behavioral model of the clean cooking transition, the intervention seeks to instill a new cooking habit - pre-soaking beans before cooking them - amongst groups of participants. It targets participant attitudes, bean cooking norms and perceived behavioral control, as well as using contextual cues to encourage repetition of the behavior over time. Results point to the successful formation of the new habit and to lower cook times on traditional stoves on days beans are cooked. Notably, the intervention also positively affects attitudes about the suitability of modern stoves for bean cooking and increases participants’ aspirations and expectations to purchase these devices. Results manifest through the intermediate variables modeled in our theoretical framework; attitudes, norms, and perceived behavioral control; as well as occurring sequentially through one another along the theory of change.

In this study, we provide causal evidence on the capacity of monetary incentives to encourage real-life local leaders for the management of water and land to improve their procedural fairness. We report results from incentivized decisions and surveys conducted with local leaders governing shared land or water resources in rural Namibia (n=64) and their constituents (n=384). In the incentivized decisions, conditional payments are introduced in a setting where leaders can select among three rules for distributing a monetary allocation between themselves and constituents. The three procedures are either a democratic (majority vote), pseudo-democratic (appearing democratic, full control by leader), or autocratic (full control by leader) rule. Leaders make rule choices over a baseline and two rounds, where we randomly introduce a small or large conditional payment for allowing for a vote, which may include the pseudo-democratic rule. The majority of leaders (64%) embrace democratic decision-making initially. With payments there is a significant reduction in autocratic leadership, by switching mainly to the pseudo-democratic rule, but with no significant increase in truly democratic leadership. Explorative analyses reveal that the effects are mainly driven by extrinsically motivated leaders to govern, who are less democratic initially than intrinsic motivated leaders, and reap the conditional payments without effectively including constituents in the decision process. Our findings suggest that simply introducing conditional payments for democratic choices may not be sufficient to promote democratization of local governance for the management of natural resources, and caution against their blueprint use in pluralistic governance settings.

We use an experiment to study the demand for complete and incomplete formal punishment institutions and their ability to promote cooperation. Complete punishment institutions are implemented by the whole group and bind everyone. Incomplete punishment institutions are implemented by a subgroup and bind only the members of this subgroup. We distinguish between strictly and potentially incomplete punishment institutions: In the former, only one subgroup can bind itself while the remaining individuals are unbound. In the latter, several subgroups can bind themselves independently and separately in different institutions, potentially binding everyone. Theoretically, the demand for such formal punishment institutions should depend only on the benefits of cooperation within the group or subgroup bound by the institution. However, the experimental results show that, in the case of incomplete punishment institutions, the benefit of cooperation has a much smaller impact on demand than theory predicts. Instead, individuals’ cooperativeness and the behavior of the other subgroup become important determinants.

A prominent example of how inter-group tensions can translate into systematic violence are farmer-herder conflicts within the Sahel region, potentially undermined by the impacts of climate change on previously harmonious relationships. This study provides two main contributions – firstly, on an empirical level on the effects of group identities on farmer-herder relations and, secondly, on a methodological level, as we employ a mixed methods approach. We conducted (i) a public good experiment with 332 farmers and herders in Senegal measuring cooperation in response to in-group and out-group priming under individual and collective risks, and (ii) 14 in-depth focus group discussions to identify in-group and out-group perceptions and draw out central mechanisms. The results reveal that reinforcing out-group identity leads to hostility towards out-group members, particularly among farmers, while reinforcing in-group membership does not necessarily foster in-group favoritism. Surprisingly, herders exhibit reduced cooperation in response to in-group priming, attributed to rivalry between ‘local’ and ‘mobile’ herders. Negative perceptions of mobile herders, so-called ‘transhumance’ contribute to out-group hostility. Notably, collective risks, such as extreme climate events, do not exacerbate a reduction in cooperation through a group identity mechanism. These findings have crucial implications for peace and security efforts in the Sahel, especially in relatively peaceful areas with farmer-herder and herder-herder interactions.