Speaker
Description
Bottom-up initiatives based on local capacity building have become a popular alternative to the traditional top-down provision of local public goods. This study compares the effectiveness of these two approaches. Based on a randomized controlled trial with 120 communities in rural El Salvador, we assess the impact of two interventions addressing solid waste contamination: (i) a top-down intervention where streets were cleaned by an external actor, and (ii) a bottom-up intervention where a facilitator raised awareness and mobilized for collective action. Using an objective measure of pollution based on geotagged photos and deep learning, we find large immediate effects for both interventions, with reductions in waste by 39 percent for the top-down intervention and 28 percent for the bottom-up intervention. Four months after the end of the project, these effects depreciated by 80 percent for the top-down and 60 percent for the bottom-up treatment. Our complementary data from 2,421 surveys and 883 activity records is consistent with a theoretical framework where many individuals are willing to contribute to public goods when others do, but fail to coordinate in the absence of a committed leader.
| Keyword | Environmental Economics and Sustainability |
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