On the Endogeneity of Resource Co-management: Theory and Evidence from Indonesia

We examine theoretically the emergence of participatory co-management agreements that share between state and user the management of resources and the benefits from use. Going beyond user-user interactions, our state-user model addresses a critical question-when will co-management arise?-in order to consider the right baseline for evaluating co-management's forest and welfare impacts. We then compare our model's hypotheses concerning de facto rights, negotiated agreements, and transfers (all endogenous) with community-level data including observed agreements in a protected Indonesian forest. These unique data could refute the model, despite being limited, but instead offer support.