The Influence of Legitimacy Perceptions on Cooperation – A Framed Field Experiment

Decentralization of irrigation management is claimed to improve performance by enhancing legitimacy and, thus, increasing cooperation. We test this hypothesis by collecting information about water users' legitimacy perceptions and assessing the impact of these perceptions on irrigation charge payments and behavior in a framed field experiment. Our results show that legitimacy perceptions differ between communities and between water users association members and non-members but that these differences do not explain charge payments nor behavior in the irrigation treatment of the game. We conclude that decentralization may enhance legitimacy perceptions but that this does not necessarily increase cooperation in irrigation management. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.