The Impacts of Collective Action in Common-Pool Resources ——Evidence From the Field of Grassland Use
Description
The deterioration of common-pool resources is a serious issue faced by over the world now. How to manage public resources sustainably is extremely urgent. Collective action plays an important role in the sustainable management of common-pool resources. It creates a common goal that makes resource users not only concern their individual interests, but also the collective interests, in order to avoid the common-pool resource dilemma. The extent of collective interests that resource users concern affects their decisions in collective action, which further impacts the sustainable use of common-pool resources. We use a grazing experiment to observe and measure collective action. Combining the experimental data with the data in the real world, we find that resource users with more collective interests in collective action have higher grassland quality and less grazing livestock. Moreover, we use principal components analysis measuring collective action indicators to verify the robustness of these findings. A mechanism analysis is conducted to explain why collective action has positive effects on grassland restoration. Heterogeneity analysis examines the different impacts of collective actions with various natural endowments and individual characteristics. This study proves that collective action has positive impacts on the sustainable management of common-pool resources, which provides an empirical evidence on sustainable use of public natural resources through community-based natural resource management.
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The Impacts of Collective Action in Common-Pool Resources ——Evidence From the Field of Grassland Use
The deterioration of common-pool resources is a serious issue faced by over the world now. How to manage public resources sustainably is extremely urgent. Collective action plays an important role in the sustainable management of common-pool resources. It creates a common goal that makes resource users not only concern their individual interests, but also the collective interests, in order to avoid the common-pool resource dilemma. The extent of collective interests that resource users concern affects their decisions in collective action, which further impacts the sustainable use of common-pool resources. We use a grazing experiment to observe and measure collective action. Combining the experimental data with the data in the real world, we find that resource users with more collective interests in collective action have higher grassland quality and less grazing livestock. Moreover, we use principal components analysis measuring collective action indicators to verify the robustness of these findings. A mechanism analysis is conducted to explain why collective action has positive effects on grassland restoration. Heterogeneity analysis examines the different impacts of collective actions with various natural endowments and individual characteristics. This study proves that collective action has positive impacts on the sustainable management of common-pool resources, which provides an empirical evidence on sustainable use of public natural resources through community-based natural resource management.
