Understanding the motivations behind people’s voluntary contributions to public goods is crucial for the broader issues of economic and social development. By using the experimental design of Fischbacher, Gächter, and Fehr (2001), we investigate the distribution of contribution types in two developing countries with very high collectivism rating – Colombia and Vietnam – and compare our findings with those previously found in developed countries.

Public goods provision is essential for economic development. Yet there is limited evidence regarding contributions to local public goods in developing countries. This article analyses a field experiment where all 200 households in a village in rural Vietnam make real contributions to a public good that is very important for them in daily life—a bridge. We study the role of social influence (that people may be more willing to co-operate if others do) and the effects of the default alternative in the choice situation.

The rapid growth of aquaculture affects wild fisheries in several ways. We present a bioeconomic model of the interaction between a commercial wild fishery and capture‐based aquaculture that depends on harvest of wild juveniles. We assume that aquaculture reduces the intrinsic growth rate of the wild fish stock due to wild caught juveniles used as seeds, influencing wild stock size and commercial harvest. This may increase the economic conflicts between fishers and farmers. Introducing a marine protected area is expected to reduce these conflicts.

It is well-recognized that new technology is a crucial part of any solution to the problem of climate change. But since investments in research and development take time to mature, price and quantity instruments, i.e., carbon taxes and cap-and-trade, run into a commitment problem. We assume that the government cannot commit to the level of a policy instrument in advance, but sets the level to be optimal ex-post.

This paper presents a deterministic bioeconomic model in which the creation of a marine protected area (MPA) is not only a fisheries management tool but also introduced in order to provide tourism amenity benefits. The theoretical model is illustrated with analysis of the Nha Trang Bay (NTB) MPA in Khanh Hoa province in Vietnam, where the anchovy purse seine fishery is considered. An amenity value function of the NTB MPA is estimated from a discrete choice experiment among national tourists.

It is well-known that operating within the boundaries of a national park provides commercial actors with the opportunity to charge a price premium, though this has to a lesser degree been demonstrated for marine protected areas.

Knowledge of people's understanding of environmental problems is vital for the effective implementation of the ecosystem approach to marine management. This is especially relevant when conservation goals are aimed at ecosystems in the deep-sea that are remote to the consciousness of most people. This study explores public perceptions of the deep-sea environment among the Scottish and Norwegian public.

We measure people's pro-social behavior, in terms of voluntary money and labor contributions to an archetypical public good, a bridge, and in terms of voluntary money contributions in a public good game, using the same non-student sample in rural Vietnam at four different points in time from 2005 to 2011. Two of the observed events are actual voluntary contributions (one in terms of money and one in terms of labor), one is from a natural field experiment, and one is from an artefactual field experiment.

The prime objective of this paper is to estimate from a cross-country perspective the willingness to pay for marine turtle conservation using the contingent valuation method. A secondary objective is to investigate two methodological issues about contingent valuation study: scope effect and payment vehicle effect. Using a uniform survey instrument and protocol, a sample of 3680 respondents from Beijing (China), Davao City (Philippines), Bangkok (Thailand) and Ho Chi Minh/Hanoi (Vietnam) were interviewed.

This study measures the public preferences for cultivated land protection as a case study of Wenling City, China, using the choice experiment (CE) approach. The estimation results indicate that the most important attribute for cultivated land protection in Wenling City was land facility, followed by land fertility and then by landscape improvement.