Willy, Daniel Kyalo: Institutional Analysis of Agri-Environmental Externalities : Issues on Collective Action and Technology Diffusion in the Lake Naivasha Basin, Kenya. - Bonn, 2013. - Dissertation, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.
Online-Ausgabe in bonndoc: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:5n-33254
@phdthesis{handle:20.500.11811/5554,
urn: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:5n-33254,
author = {{Daniel Kyalo Willy}},
title = {Institutional Analysis of Agri-Environmental Externalities : Issues on Collective Action and Technology Diffusion in the Lake Naivasha Basin, Kenya},
school = {Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn},
year = 2013,
month = sep,

note = {Lake Naivasha is the second largest fresh water lake in Kenya and the only fresh water Lake located in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Its basin supports important economic activities such as floriculture, horticulture, food crop production, tourism, fisheries, pastoralism and geothermal electricity generation. Agriculture is the most dominant type of land use in the basin and has substantial direct effects on the Lake Naivasha ecosystem. These effects are manifested through the dependence of the sector on the ecosystem for provisioning, supporting and regulating ecosystem services. As a result of these agri-environmental interactions, the basin has been grappling with three main environmental challenges: siltation, eutrophication and water scarcity. Through these challenges resource users impose unilateral negative externalities on third parties causing a policy challenge.
The goal of this thesis is to identify the institutional challenges encountered while seeking solutions to these environmental problems. It also seeks to analyze the diffusion process of technologies that help to mitigate negative agri-environmental externalities. The thesis is composed of four empirical studies, each addressing a specific objective. All the studies utilized cross-sectional household survey data collected from 308 randomly selected farm households from the Lake Naivasha basin, Kenya. The first empirical chapter identifies co-operators and defectors among the sampled households using two step cluster analysis. Motivated by the theory of collective action, a logistic regression model was used to identify the factors influencing the cooperative behaviour of households. In the next chapter, propensity score matching and exogenous switching regression models were used to assess the effect of implementing multiple soil conservation practices on the value of crop production. The third empirical chapter used a two step regression procedure to assess the influence of participation in collective action and neighbourhood social influence on farm level soil conservation efforts. Finally, a parametric econometric log-logistic duration model was used to analyze the diffusion of rain water harvesting techniques among the sampled households.
The results from the above analyses indicate that the sampled households are predominantly defectors. The tendency to cooperate is influenced by expected benefits, labour endowments, human capital, social sanctions and norms of trust. With regard to private economic benefits of soil conservation practices, the results indicate that multiple soil conservation practices generate higher value of crop production. However, the results indicate that under certain circumstances, these additional positive benefits might not be substantial enough to cover the opportunity costs associated with these practices. Therefore, it was thought important to assess whether there are other factors besides private economic benefits that could motivate farmers to adopt soil conservation practices. It emerged from the results of the third empirical study that participation in collective action is a significant determinant of the soil conservation effort among the sampled households. Secondly, results indicate that social control that emerges from neighbourhood social influence and subjective norms are also key determinants of soil conservation efforts. Therefore, social control can substitute for pure economic incentives as a motivation for engaging in soil conservation. The results from the final empirical study indicate that rainfall variability, access to information and socio-demographic attributes such as age and education level are the key drivers of the process of diffusion of rain water harvesting techniques. It emerged that technology adoption has become more of an endogenous process of social exchange within communities and less driven by external natural predicament and persuasion by external agents. Informal sources of information have emerged as an important medium of technology dissemination.
For each of these results we draw imperative policy implications pointing out areas where policy could focus on so as to enhance mitigation of agri-environmental externalities.},

url = {https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11811/5554}
}

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