Beyond Ostrom: Randomized experiment of the impact of individualized tree rights on forest management in Ethiopia
通过埃塞俄比亚的随机实验，研究混合私有与社区管理森林制度的效果，发现个体树木权能显著激励修剪、看护等集约管理活动，并增加木材产出，但对非木材产品无影响。
We argue that while community forest management is effective in protecting forest resources, as argued by Ostrom, such management may fail to provide the proper incentives to nurture such resources because the benefits of forest management are collectively shared. This study proposes a mixed private and community management system characterized by communal protection of community-owned forest areas and individual management of individually owned trees as a desirable arrangement for timber forest management in developing countries. By conducting a randomized experiment in Ethiopia, we found that the mixed management system significantly stimulated intensive forest management activities, including pruning, guarding, and watering. Furthermore, more timber trees and forest products were extracted from the treated areas, which are byproducts of tree management (e.g., thinned trees and pruned branches). In contrast, the extracted volumes of non-timber forest products unrelated to tree management (fodder and honey) did not change with the intervention.