Environmental Economics
Sasan Gharakhani; Hadi Amiri; Babak Saffari; Maede Mohammadi
Abstract
Groundwater is a natural common-pool resource that has long been a victim of tragedy of the commons due to selfish withdrawal of farmers During recent years. One solution to coping with this problem is to replace flood irrigation with large-scale irrigation system (LIS) within the framework of participatory ...
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Groundwater is a natural common-pool resource that has long been a victim of tragedy of the commons due to selfish withdrawal of farmers During recent years. One solution to coping with this problem is to replace flood irrigation with large-scale irrigation system (LIS) within the framework of participatory conservation projects. As these projects are costly, they require financial support by the government and cooperation among farmers. In this study, given the unstable raining conditions and drying out of Zayanderud, an agent-based model (ABM) on participatory management of groundwater resources is proposed for 223 villages in Isfahan Province in the form of participatory conservative projects. The results of this study indicate sensitivity of model’s simulation and high sensitivity of villagers to the government’s financial supports. This model predicts when the government pays 85% of the costs for changing the irrigation system, the participation will rise to two-thirds. Further, the results of simulation suggest that with increasing the number of farmers, the rate of participation will significantly drop. Finally, according to different scenarios in this study, it is suggested that the government begins its financial support from the small villages with the pioneer group (near the pumping water) and scale-free social network.
Institutional Economics
Mohamad Mahdi Kamal; Hadi Amiri; Vahid Moghadam; Darrius Rahimi
Abstract
The Dictator Game can describe many environmental challenges. That is the conditions where exploiters have asymmetric power in exploitation. For solving such environmental problems, solutions have been proposed, several of which focus on exogenous factors and others on characteristics of users. In this ...
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The Dictator Game can describe many environmental challenges. That is the conditions where exploiters have asymmetric power in exploitation. For solving such environmental problems, solutions have been proposed, several of which focus on exogenous factors and others on characteristics of users. In this research, we are looking for a solution to one of these problems in the field of water for Iranian exploiters. To do this, we used experimental economics in the context of institutional analysis and development framework. The game was played in 19 groups of 5 participants with 1767 observations and then estimated using an econometrics model. This study showed that creating a club good downstream of the river and supporting local regulation (along with intra-system monitoring) can enable water distribution to occur more uniformly among users. Additionally, supporting local regulation has more substantial effects than the creation of club goods in water distribution. Furthermore, the data analysis obtained through the experiment and Ring Game shows that if the upstream exploiters have an other-regarding social value orientation, it produces positive effects on the exploit of other people so that the downstream exploiters also benefit from water. Thus, this research can have some implications for solving Iran's environmental problems similar to the dictator game.