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Motives behind community participation: Evidence from natural and artefactual field experiments in Sri Lanka
Author(s) -
Shoji Masahiro,
Aoyagi Keitaro,
Kasahara Ryuji,
Sawada Yasuyuki
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
pacific economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.34
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1468-0106
pISSN - 1361-374X
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0106.12352
Subject(s) - altruism (biology) , lottery , dictator , economics , sri lanka , investment (military) , dictator game , public good , work (physics) , microeconomics , public economics , socioeconomics , social psychology , psychology , political science , mechanical engineering , politics , law , engineering , tanzania
We tested four alternative hypotheses concerning the motivations behind the participation by rural households in community work: public goods investment, production network formation, risk‐sharing network formation, and pure altruism. We used a unique dataset from an irrigation project in Sri Lanka under a natural experimental situation where a significant portion of irrigated land was allocated through a lottery mechanism. In addition, we elicited the level of altruism using the dictator game. By combining these data, we showed that community participation patterns fit the motive to form risk‐sharing networks better than the other major motives. Only a few studies have empirically investigated the process of risk‐sharing network formation, and our analysis fills the gap in the literature.