Conditional rewards for sustainable behavior: targeting lessons from an open access fishery

Résumé

We design and conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment to test the effect of a conditional contract on the sustainability of an open access fishery, where unit prices are conditional on aggregate catch. The contract provides collective incentives to decrease extraction but maintain the individual incentives of extraction maximization. We conduct the experiment with two communities of artisanal fishermen differing in their market and technological restrictions. We find that the conditional contract, compared to a fixed price scheme, increases efficiency, the duration of the resource and the total yield. The contract has a greater effect upon groups from the less restricted community.

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Référence

Astrid Hopfensitz, Cesar Mantilla et Josepa Miquel-Florensa, « Conditional rewards for sustainable behavior: targeting lessons from an open access fishery », TSE Working Paper, n° 16-633, mars 2016, révision juin 2016.