Local Environmental Control and Institutional Crowding-Out

Publicado en

  • World Development

Resumen

  • Regulations that are designed to improve social welfare typically begin with the premise that individuals are purely self-interested. Experimental evidence shows, however, that individuals do not typically behave this way; instead, they tend to strike a balance between self and group interests. From experiments performed in rural Colombia, we found that a regulatory solution for an environmental dilemma that standard theory predicts would improve social welfare clearly did not. This occurred because individuals confronted with the regulation began to exhibit less other-regarding behavior and made choices that were more self-interested; that is, the regulation appeared to crowd out other-regarding behavior.

fecha de publicación

  • 2000

Página inicial

  • 1719

Última página

  • 1733

Volumen

  • 28

Issue

  • 10