| dc.description.abstract | Conceptualising smallholder farming households as collective action institutions,
that make interrelated decisions about investment, resource use and allocation in a common
household farm, may contribute to understanding widely observed uncooperative outcomes,
such as yield gaps, gender gaps in productivity, suboptimal or Pareto inefficient sustainable intensification
and climate change adaptation. We examine the relation between participatory
intra-household decision making – as a set of ‘rules of the game’ that reduces information and
bargaining power asymmetries – and cooperative, i.e. more efficient, sustainable and equitable,
outcomes in smallholder coffee farming households in Uganda. We find experimental evidence
that participatory decision making is positively related to investments in the common household
farm. Consumption behaviour however is not fairer nor more sustainable. Participatory decision
making is associated with more cooperative actual outcomes such as greater investment in sustainable
intensification, consideration of women’s interests, fairer reproductive intra-household
labour division, more balanced control over cash crop income and improved livelihoods. |
