Making agricultural households cooperative: Experimental evidence from East Africa

This study investigates the impact of an intensive coaching package introducing participatory intrahousehold decision-making, randomly encouraged among monogamous couples in Ugandan and Tanzanian smallholder coffee farming households who participated in awareness raising, on the efficiency of couples’ investment and allocation decisions measured in a lab-in-the-field experiment. Two consecutive Voluntary Contribution Mechanism (VCM) games measured investment decisions, subsequent simultaneous modified dictator games allocation decisions. Free and costless in-game communication per couple preceded the second VCM game in a random two thirds of experiments. The effects of intensive coaching treatment, in-game communication and differential effects of communication in control and treatment group are estimated with models that include random effects for each couple and account for non-compliance with encouragement. The intensive coaching, versus only attending awareness raising, did not affect the efficiency of couples’ investment and allocation decisions. The intensive coaching caused husbands to make more efficient investment decisions in the second VCM game without communication. That effect differs between husbands and wives, whose decisions were not significantly affected by the intensive coaching in the second VCM game without communication. The intensive coaching improved the accuracy of wives’ expectations about their husbands’ contributions in the first and second VCM game with communication. The accuracy of the expectations by husbands in the control group about their wives’ contributions improved as a result of in-game communication. Wives in the control group exhibited less altruist/cooperative norm abiding behavior in the second VCM game as a result of in-game communication.

本研究旨在探讨在乌干达和坦桑尼亚小农咖啡种植家庭中，针对一夫一妻制夫妇群体，引入参与式家庭内部决策的强化辅导方案对其投资与配置决策效率的影响，该效率通过实地实验室实验进行衡量。实验采用连续两次自愿贡献机制（VCM）游戏来评估投资决策，随后通过同时进行的改良独裁者游戏来评估配置决策。在随机三分之二实验中，每对夫妇在第二次VCM游戏前可进行免费且无需成本的沟通。通过包含每对夫妇随机效应并对鼓励的非遵守情况进行解释的模型，估计了强化辅导治疗、游戏内沟通以及在对照组和实验组中沟通差异的影响。强化辅导与仅参加意识提升活动相比，并未影响夫妇的投资与配置决策效率。强化辅导使得丈夫在无需沟通的第二次VCM游戏中做出更有效的投资决策。这一效果在不同性别之间存在差异，妻子的决策在无需沟通的第二次VCM游戏中并未受到强化辅导的显著影响。强化辅导提高了妻子对丈夫贡献预期的准确性，在第一次和第二次VCM游戏中有沟通的情况下尤为明显。对照组丈夫对其妻子贡献的预期准确性随着游戏内沟通的进行而提升。对照组中的妻子在第二次VCM游戏中有沟通的情况下表现出较少的利他/合作行为规范遵守。