Joint Forest Management (JFM) is a form of participatory forest governance that aims for protection, conservation and sustainable use of forest resources by involving local communities. The JFM reforms have been promoted to address forest and land degradation, as vital in reducing institutional uncertainty in complex environments and strengthening cooperation among resource users. We draw on theories of collective action and transaction costs assuming that the overharvesting problem can be reduced by efficient and effective rules that support cooperation between forest users in using common pool resources at the group level and explore how forest users respond to policies that aim to reduce overharvesting in Tajikistan. To this end, we used a framed field experiment involving actual forest resource users. We find a strong impact of rules and the associated transaction costs in dealing with environmental and institutional uncertainties. The experiment results indicate that the harvesting rate is likely to decrease when institutionalized mechanisms are introduced to coordinate the interdependence among resource users. The overall results suggest that the rule determining harvest on a rotational basis is effective in reducing harvesting under environmental uncertainty regardless of the existence of communication and under institutional uncertainty when communication is permitted.

联合森林管理 (JFM) 是一种参与式森林治理形式，旨在通过让当地社区参与来保护、保存和可持续利用森林资源。JFM 改革已被推进以解决森林和土地退化问题，这对于减少复杂环境中的制度不确定性和加强资源使用者之间的合作至关重要。我们借鉴了集体行动和交易成本的理论，假设可以通过支持森林使用者之间合作使用群体级别的公共池资源的高效和有效规则来减少过度采伐问题，并探讨森林使用者如何响应旨在减少塔吉克斯坦的过度收获。为此，我们使用了涉及实际森林资源用户的框架式现场试验。我们发现规则和相关交易成本在处理环境和制度不确定性方面的强大影响。实验结果表明，当引入制度化机制来协调资源使用者之间的相互依存关系时，收获率可能会下降。总体结果表明，无论是否存在交流，在允许交流的制度不确定性下，轮流决定收获的规则在减少环境不确定性下的收获方面是有效的。