Around the globe, a lack of access to adequate sanitation exposes the poor to serious health risks. Significant associated costs must be borne, especially by women and children in urban slums. In the absence of private toilets, neighbors often share toilets. In this paper, we have demonstrated that maintenance of such shared toilets can be viewed as a collective action problem, and we have used an economic experiment to study the impact of leading by example and economic heterogeneity on contributions to a public good. In our study, both factors exhibit a negative effect on cooperation, although leadership is positive if participants are experienced in this role.
In our experiment, experienced leaders came from the ubiquitous Indian self-help group system. Leaders were not different from non-leaders in our data, which suggests that experience with leadership matters more than personal characteristics. Thus, a careful rotation of leadership roles might have the potential to create substantive co-benefits in other domains such as sanitation. The ability to set a positive example is not necessarily an inborn character trait, but it can be learned with practice.
References
Agrawal, A., & Gibson, C. C. (1999). Enchantment and Disenchantment: The Role of Community in Natural Resource Conservation. World Development, 27, 629–649.
Andreoni, J. (2006). Leadership Giving in Charitable Fund-Raising. Journal of Public Economic Theory, 8, 1–22.
Andres, L. A., Briceño, B., Chaise, C., & Echenique, J. A. (2014). Sanitation and Externalities: Evidence from Early Childhood Health in Rural India. Policy Research Working Paper. Washington, D.C.
Aquino, K., Steisel, V., & Kay, A. (1992). The Effects of Resource Distribution, Voice, and Decision Framing on the Provision of Public Goods. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 36, 665–687.
Baland, J.-M., & Platteau, J.-P. (1997). Wealth Inequality and Efficiency in the Commons Part I: The Unregulated Case. Oxford Economic Papers, 49, 451–482.
Baland, J.-M., Bardhan, P. K., & Bowles, S. (Eds.) (2007). Inequality, cooperation, and environmental sustainability. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Baruah, B. (2007). Assessment of public–private–NGO partnerships: Water and sanitation services in slums. Natural Resources Forum, 31, 226–237.
Bharamappanavara, S., Hanisch, M., & Rommel, J. (in press). The Effect of Heterogeneity and Freedom of Participation on Collective Action in Rural Self-Help Groups:
Combining In-depth Interviews with Curve Estimation. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, DOI: 10.1177/1558689814550876.
Black, M., & Fawcett, B. (2008). The last taboo: Opening the door on the global sanitation crisis. London, Sterling, VA: Earthscan.
Bouma, J., Joy, K., Paranjape, S., & Ansink, E. (2014). The Influence of Legitimacy Perceptions on Cooperation: A Framed Field Experiment. World Development, 57, 127–137.
Buckley, E., & Croson, R. (2006). Income and wealth heterogeneity in the voluntary provision of linear public goods. Journal of Public Economics, 90, 935–955.
Calvert, R. (1992). Leadership and Its Basis in Problems of Social Coordination.
International Political Science Review, 13, 7–24.
Cárdenas, J.-C., Stranlund, J., & Willis, C. (2002). Economic inequality and burden-sharing in the provision of local environmental quality. Ecological Economics, 40, 379–395.
Chakravarty, S., Sebi, C., Somanathan, E., & Theophilus, E. (2010). The Demographics of Cooperation: Evidence from a Field Experiment in the Gori-Ganga Basin. Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Working Papers.
Chan, K. S., Mestelman, S., Moir, R., & Muller, R. A. (1996). The voluntary provision of public goods under varying income distributions. Canadian Journal of Economics, 29, 54–69.
Chan, K. S., Mestelman, S., Moir, R., & Muller, R. A. (1999). Heterogeneity and the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods. Experimental Economics, 2, 5–30.
Chaplin, S. E. (1999). Cities, sewers and poverty: India's politics of sanitation.
Environment and Urbanization, 11, 145–158.
Charness, G., Gneezy, U., & Kuhn, M. A. (2012). Experimental methods: Between-subject and within-subject design. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 81, 1–8.
Chaudhuri, A. (2011). Sustaining cooperation in laboratory public goods experiments: A selective survey of the literature. Experimental Economics, 14, 47–83.
Cherry, T. L., Kroll, S., & Shogren, J. F. (2005). The impact of endowment heterogeneity and origin on public good contributions: Evidence from the lab. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 57, 357–365.
Clasen, T., Cairncross, S., Haller, L., Bartram, J., & Walker, D. (2007). Cost-effectiveness of water quality interventions for preventing diarrhoeal disease in developing countries. Journal of Water and Health, 5, 599–608.
Curtis, V., Schmidt, W., Luby, S., Florez, R., Touré, O., & Biran, A. (2011). Hygiene: New hopes, new horizons. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 11, 312–321.
Engel, S., & Susilo, A. (2014). Shaming and Sanitation in Indonesia: A Return to Colonial Public Health Practices? Development and Change, 45, 157–178.
Filmer, D., & Pritchett, L. (2001). Estimating Wealth Effects Without Expenditure Data--Or Tears: An Application to Educational Enrollments in States of India.
Demography, 38, 115–132.
Fischbacher, U., Gächter, S., & Fehr, E. (2001). Are people conditionally cooperative?
Evidence from a public goods experiment. Economics Letters, 71, 397–404.
Foss, N. J. (2001). Leadership, Beliefs and Coordination: An Explorative Discussion.
Industrial and Corporate Change, 10, 357–388.
Friedman, D., & Sunder, S. (1994). Experimental methods: A primer for economists.
Cambridge (England); New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gächter, S., & Renner, E. (2003). Leading-by-example in the presence of free rider
incentives: Paper presented at the Workshop on leadership and social interactions, GATE, Lyon.
Government of India (2005). Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.
Retrieved June 17, 2011, from:
https://jnnurmmis.nic.in/jnnurm_hupa/jnnurm/Overview.pdf.
Günther, I., Niwagaba, C. B., Lüthi, C., Horst, A., Mosler, H.-J., & Tumwebaze, I. K.
(2012). When is shared sanitation improved sanitation? The correlation between number of users and toilet hygiene.
Güth, W., Levati, M. V., Sutter, M., & van der Heijden, E. (2007). Leading by example with and without exclusion power in voluntary contribution experiments. Journal of Public Economics, 91, 1023–1042.
Habyarimana, J. P., Humphreys, M., Posner, D. N., & Weinstein, J. M. (2009). Coethnicity:
Diversity and the dilemmas of collective action. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Hardin, G. (1968). The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, 162, 1243–1248.
Harrison, G. W., & List, J. A. (2004). Field Experiments. Journal of Economic Literature, 42, 1009–1055.
Hayo, B., & Vollan, B. (2012). Group Interaction, Heterogeneity, Rules, and Co-operative Behaviour: Evidence from a Common-Pool Resource Experiment, in South Africa and Namibia. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 81, 9–28.
Hermalin, B. E. (1998). Toward an Economic Theory of Leadership: Leading by Example.
American Economic Review, 88, 1188–1206.
Isaac, R. M., Walker, J. M., & Thomas, S. H. (1984). Divergent evidence on free riding: An experimental examination of possible explanations. Public Choice, 43, 113–149.
Jalan, J., & Somanathan, E. (2008). The importance of being informed: Experimental evidence on demand for environmental quality. Journal of Development Economics, 87, 14–28.
Keuschnigg, M., & Schikora, J. (2014). The dark side of leadership: An experiment on religious heterogeneity and cooperation in India. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 48, 19–26.
Kutter, R.W. (2014). Demystifying Beneficiary Participation and Its Effects in International Development. PhD Dissertation, Arizona State University.
Ledyard, J. (1995). Public goods: A survey of experimental research. In J. H. Kagel, & A.
E. Roth (Eds.), The handbook of experimental economics (pp. 111–194). Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
Levati, M. V., Sutter, M., & van der Heijden, E. (2007). Leading by Example in a Public Goods Experiment with Heterogeneity and Incomplete Information. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 51, 793–818.
Markelova, H., Meinzen-Dick, R., Hellin, J., & Dohrn, S. (2009). Collective action for smallholder market access. Food Policy, 34, 1–7.
McFarlane, C. (2012). From sanitation inequality to malevolent urbanism: The normalisation of suffering in Mumbai. Geoforum, 43, 1287–1290.
Mosler, H.-J. (2012). A systematic approach to behavior change interventions for the water and sanitation sector in developing countries: A conceptual model, a review, and a guideline. International Journal of Environmental Health Research, 22, 431–449.
Moxnes, E., & van der Heijden, E. (2003). The Effect of Leadership in a Public Bad Experiment. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 47, 773–795.
Nkonya, E., Pender, J., Pender, J., & Kato, E. (2008). Who knows, who cares? The determinants of enactment, awareness, and compliance with community Natural Resource Management regulations in Uganda. Environment and Development Economics, 13, 79–101.
Olson, M. (1965). The logic of collective action: Public goods and the theory of groups.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ostrom, E. (2009). A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems. Science, 325, 419–422.
Poteete, A. R., Janssen, M. A., & Ostrom, E. (2010). Working together: Collective action, the commons, and multiple methods in practice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ.
Press.
Poteete, A., & Ostrom, E. (2004). Heterogeneity, Group Size and Collective Action: The Role of Institutions in Forest Management. Development and Change, 35, 435–461.
Potters, J., Sefton, M., & Vesterlund, L. (2007). Leading-by-example and signaling in voluntary contribution games: An experimental study. Economic Theory, 33, 169–
182.
Sonego, I. L., & Mosler, H.-J. (2014). Why are some latrines cleaner than others?
Determining the factors of habitual cleaning behaviour and latrine cleanliness in rural Burundi. Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, 4, 257–
267.
Sutter, M., & Rivas, M. F. (2014). Leadership, Rewards and Punishment in Sequential Public Good Experiments. In P. A. M. V. Lange, B. Rockenbach, & T. Yamagishi (Eds.), Reward and punishment in social dilemmas (pp. 133–157). New York:
Oxford University Press.
Thorp, R., Stewart, F., & Heyer, A. (2005). When and how far is group formation a route out of chronic poverty? World Development, 33, 907–920.
Truelove, Y. (2011). (Re-)Conceptualizing water inequality in Delhi, India through a feminist political ecology framework. Geoforum, 42, 143–152.
United Nations (2012a). Millennium Development Goals: 2012 Progress Chart. New York.
United Nations (2012b). The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012. New York.
van Dijk, E., & Grodzka, M. (1992). The influence of endowments asymmetry and information level on the contribution to a public step good. Journal of Economic Psychology, 13, 329–342.
van Dijk, E., & Wilke, H. (1995). Coordination Rules in Asymmetric Social Dilemmas: A Comparison between Public Good Dilemmas and Resource Dilemmas. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 31, 1–27.
Varughese, G. C., & Ostrom, E. (2001). The Contested Role of Heterogeneity in Collective Action: Some Evidence from Community Forestry in Nepal. World Development, 29, 747–765.
Werthmann, C. (2011). Understanding Institutional Arrangements for Community-Based Natural Resource Management in the Mekong Delta of Cambodia and Vietnam: A mixed methods approach. PhD Dissertation. Philipps-Universität Marburg,
Germany.
Wilson, R. K., & Rhodes, C. M. (1997). Leadership and Credibility in N-Person Coordination Games. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 41, 767–791.
World Bank Water and Sanitation Program (2011). Economic Impacts of Inadequate Sanitation in India.
Zelmer, J. (2003). Linear Public Goods Experiments: A Meta-Analysis. Experimental Economics, 6, 299–310.
Zérah, M.-H. (2007). Middle Class Neighbourhood Associations as Political Players in Mumbai. Economic and Political Weekly, 42, 61–68.
Zérah, M.-H. (2009). Participatory Governance in Urban Management and the Shifting Geometry of Power in Mumbai. Development and Change, 40, 853–877.