Experimental Design
Design WTA referendum question:
The referendum question design follows standard practice: it begins with a brief description of the contract for tree conservation on one hectare of land and then presents a randomized price, to which the individual responds that they would accept or not accept the payment. There are two versions of this question: one for households identified as having access to communal forest and one for households with mailo or private forest access. Within each of these categories, there are contracts offering the option of one payment per year or dividing the same payment equally across four quarters. There are therefore two levels of randomization: the price and the timing. Households will only respond to one version of the timing.
Follow up questions asking if they would like to enroll more land, and whether or not they would accept a higher or lower price for the same piece of land (higher if they responded no the first time, lower if they responded yes) are meant for descriptive purposes and also to test respondent understanding of the contracts.
Design tree game:
Participants will be asked to make decisions about harvesting trees in an experimental “forest” over several periods. Participants are not told how many periods over which they will make decisions, and so may think of the task as an infinite, discrete choice game.
Participants will be randomized at the individual level, in equal proportions, into 1 of 3 groups:
• Group 1: Insecure property rights (mailo treatment). Participants experience a 20% probability of being kicked off the land in each round. To determine whether the participant is kicked off the land, the participant will draw a marble from a bag containing 2 red and 8 blue marbles. If they draw a red marble, the game ends and no more harvesting decisions are made. The participant keeps their accumulated earnings from each period up to that point.
• Group 2: Insecure property rights with option to secure. Participants experience a 20% probability of being kicked off the land in each round, as in Group 1. However, they may secure their property rights by purchasing a certificate of occupancy for a cost, which will be deducted from their earnings. The cost of the certificate has been calibrated from pilot data on the true cost of certificates relative to the average profit per tree harvested.
Participants will be offered the option to buy the certificate at the beginning of each round. If they purchase a certificate of occupancy, they move to full property rights in which there is a zero probability of being kicked off the land. The game finishes until no trees remain or the periods expire. If they do not purchase a certificate, the game proceeds as in Group 1.
• Group 3: Full property rights. Participants make harvest decisions until no trees remain or the periods expire.
Design trust game:
The trust game follows the design of Berg et al. (Games and Economic Behavior, 10, pp. 122–142, 1995). Participants will be randomly paired with an unknown person who they are told is from somewhere else in Uganda. Each pair is made up of a Player 1 and a Player 2. To start, Player 1 receives 4,000 UGX. Player 1 then decides how much to give to Player 2. The amounts that Player 1 can give are: 4,000, 3,000, 2,000, 1,000, or nothing. Any amount that Player 1 decides to give to Player 2 will be tripled before it is given to Player 2. Next, Player 2 decides how much to return to Player 1. Player 2 can return any portion (including zero) of the amount they received back to Player 1.
Each participant will play the trust game twice: first as Player 1 and again as Player 2. We will follow the strategy method in which the participants state the amount they would return as Player 2 for every possible behavior from Player 1. After Player 1 and Player 2 choices are elicited, we will randomly select one strategy (Player 1 or Player 2) to be implemented for real payment.