Role of Social Norms in Natural Resource Management: The Case of the Communal Land Distribution Program in Northern Ethiopia | Land Portal

Información del recurso

Date of publication: 
Febrero 2020
Resource Language: 
ISBN / Resource ID: 
10.3390/land9020035
License of the resource: 
Copyright details: 
© 2020 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article.

The increasing population pressure in the rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa has caused land degradation as well as an increase in the number of landless farmers. To promote a conservation-oriented utilization of communal lands and increase the livelihood of poor farmers, the Ethiopian government introduced a program to distribute less-utilized communal lands to landless farmers. This study identified the social norms related to natural resource conservation that affect the participation in this program. Using data from 477 farmer households in northern Ethiopia, we estimated probit models with endogenous regressors for the determinants of social norms and their impacts on program participation. The results show that social norms related to conservation positively affect program participation. Regarding policy implication of the findings, an intervention to improve the social norms of local farmers leads to sustainable resource conservation without reducing intrinsic motivation of the local people. A conservation-oriented utilization of the communal lands would be more effective if the land distribution program was accompanied by other programs to improve the social norms in the villages.

Autores y editores

Author(s), editor(s), contributor(s): 

Oniki, Shunji
Berhe, Melaku
Negash, Teklay

Publisher(s): 

Proveedor de datos

Foco geográfico

Categorias relacionadas

Comparta esta página