Private Exchange and Social Capital: Multiple Functions of Common Property Regimes in Haiti

Abstract

"A great challenge facing CPR enthusiasts today is understanding the conditions in which CPRs can be successful. Meeting this challenge requires understanding when and why individuals choose to create and maintain CPRs. Research in this domain often focuses on the relationship between individual incentives and the output of collective action (e.g. the managed forest or irrigation system). Increasingly, practitioners and researchers realize that individuals often contribute to collective actions for reasons not directly related to the output. This paper describes the findings of research on factors associated with individual choice to participate in watershed management groups in Haiti, as well as the survival of those groups. Results indicate that (1) a substantial percentage of individual participation could be explained by motivations associated with process, rather than the output, of action; and that (2) high levels of pre-existing collective action groups were a necessary condition for the survival of watershed management groups. A majority of participants (and almost all of those who did not directly gain from management) were members of labor exchange groups and farmer associations. Additional analyses indicated that labor exchange groups serve as antecessors of more complex forms of public good-producing groups. This study indicates that the existence of some 'critical mass' of social capital is a necessary condition for successful CPRs, and that in addition to utilitarian functions, CPRs maintain and extend that social capital."